What Ever Part One
by SciFiFanForever
Summary: This is the final story in the What If series, where Rose managed to stay with the Doctor after Doomsday. They leave the events of The Day of the Doctor behind, and go on with the rest of their lives.
1. One Wedding and a Birth

**Author's note:** This is the final story in the What If series, where Rose managed to stay with the Doctor after Doomsday. They leave the events of The Day of the Doctor behind, and go on with the rest of their lives.

I have decided to do this story in two parts, because I was undecided as to how the story should unfold. I couldn't make my mind up because I thought both ideas would make a good story, so I have written two alternate endings. One with the Tenth Doctor, and one with Rose's husband changing into the Eleventh Doctor, with all that that entails. (I would be interested to know which one you prefer.)

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

 **One Wedding and a Birth**

Rose walked up the ramp to the console, as she slipped off her leather jacket and threw it on the jump seat. She was wearing just her sexy leather basque, tight leather trousers, and knee high boots, as she started to power up the console.

'Trenzalore,' she heard her husband say at the doorway. 'We need a new destination, because . . . I don't want to go,' the Doctor told his future self in the National Gallery outside. He closed the door, and joined Rose at the console, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her bare shoulder.

'Mmmm. Where's Trenzalore?' she asked, as she pulled down the Time Rotor lever.

'Trenzalore is a Level 2 human colony planet, home to many human villages,' he told her. 'There's one in particular you'd love, the snow-farming village of Christmas.'

'Christmas? You're kiddin',' she said, turning in his arms to face him.

'Nope. It's like a Christmas card scene all year round.'

'And that's where you're gonna die?' she asked, remembering what his future self had told him.

'Apparently . . . Eventually,' he said with a hint of sadness in his voice. He saw the worried look on her face. 'But not yet, eh?' he said with a smile.

'And you thought the last few Christmases were bad,' she said, trying to dismiss the feeling of foreboding. 'That one's gonna be a real downer.'

The feeling of foreboding faded away, as they left the National Gallery behind, and their timeline returned to normal. The Doctor laughed at her comment, and kissed her on the lips. The memory of meeting his future self and the old warrior also faded, along with any knowledge of being in the National Gallery or the old barn on Gallifrey.

All they knew was that they had met Queen Elizabeth the First, and saved her from a Zygon invasion. The Doctor was now appreciating his wife in her sexy leather outfit, and slid his hands from her waist to her bum. 'So, Mrs. Peel,' he said in an Eastern European accent. 'I need to find out vhy you haff infiltrated zee TARDIS.'

Rose giggled at the role play. 'And how do you propose to do that, Evil Doctor?'

He kissed the side of her neck. 'I haff incredibly effective methods of interrogation.'

'Do you expect me to talk?' she said, remembering the famous scene from Goldfinger.

'No, Mrs. Peel,' he said, nibbling her ear. 'I expect you to squeal, and moan, and beg . . . for more.'

'Ooooh.' She grabbed his lapels, and pulled him into a kiss. 'I am at your mercy Doctor. Do your worst.'

He gave her a cheeky grin, and scooped her up, carrying her off to their bedroom for a night of intense interrogation, where she would squeal with delight, moan in ecstasy, and beg him not to stop.

* * *

Martha Jones closed her front door, and dropped her shoulder bag on the floor by the hallway table, before going through to the kitchen. Her fiance was standing at the stove with his back towards her. When he heard her enter the kitchen, he turned around to reveal a comedy apron that made him look like he had a six pack and a fig leaf over his private parts.

'Hi Sweetheart. How was your day?' Mickey Smith asked her as he leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

'Oh, another alien autopsy for the Home Office. It was like a giant insect, with a really hard exoskeleton. It took a diamond cutting disk to get through it's shell.'

'It's a good job I'm not cookin' lobster then, innit,' he said with a grin. 'Have ya phoned them yet to ask them about next Friday?'

'I've tried a couple of times, but I got no answer.'

'Why don't you try 'em again now while I finish the dinner,' Mickey suggested.

'Yeah. Okay,' Martha said as she went into the lounge and sat on the sofa. It had been around six months since she had last seen her friends, after they had returned the Earth back to it's proper location. She took out her mobile phone, and looked through her contacts list to find the number she wanted. She selected the number, and the call tone "burred" away.

['Martha? Is that you?'] Rose asked as she answered the call.

'Rose! At last! How are you?' asked Martha.

['Hah. It's great to hear from you. Yeah, we're good thanks. The Doctor says I'm blossomin', but I'm just fat.']

Martha laughed. 'You're not fat, you're what . . . eight months pregnant now?'

She heard Rose laugh as well. ['Yeah, I know. But it doesn't stop me feelin' fat.']

'The reason I'm calling, is because I want to know if you'll be on Earth next Friday?'

['We're on Alzarius at the moment, watchin' the Mistfall. It's beautiful. Hang on, I'll ask my co-pilot.']

['Oi! Whatcha mean "your co-pilot"?'] Martha heard the Doctor say in the background.

['We haven't got anythin' planned for next Friday have we?']

['Not at the moment, no.']

['Friday's good. What's so special about next Friday?'] Rose asked.

'Me and Mickey are getting married,' Martha told her. She had to hold the phone away from her ear as Rose squealed with delight.

['Oh that is brilliant. Martha and Mickey are gettin' married,'] she heard Rose tell the Doctor. ['I am SO pleased for you both.']

'Thank you. So you'll be there yeah?'

['Try and stop us! Oh, I'll have to go to Mothercare and get a new outfit . . .']

'Okay Rose. Got to go now, dinner's ready. Love to the Doctor, and we'll see you next Friday. Bye.'

['Bye. See ya soon.']

* * *

 **St Mary's Church.**

 **St Mary's Road.**

 **Wimbledon.**

 **Friday 5th June, 2009.**

On the lawn in front of St Mary's Church, the laughter of children could be heard, as they played an impromptu game of football. Adults were standing around in small groups in their best outfits, chatting and catching up on the shared gossip. Some of the men were wearing morning suits which were traditional for a wedding ceremony.

The groom Mickey Smith, and a few of the guests noticed the grinding, wheezing sound of time and space being rearranged to allow a blue wooden police box to land on the lawn, in the shade of a large tree, and hurriedly made their way towards it.

The door of the TARDIS opened and a very pregnant Rose stepped out, wearing a pink figure hugging dress that showed off her "bump" beautifully. She accessorised the dress with a short, white jacket, white sandals, and a small, 1920's style white hat.

'Well, Lookie who we got here,' she heard a familiar American drawl say. A pair of strong arms pulled her into a hug. 'Rosie, don't you look swell.'

Rose rolled her eyes and laughed. 'Yeah. Nice one Jack.' She grabbed his cheeks, and pulled him into a snog. 'Nice to see ya.'

'Rose! You made it!' Mickey said, giving her a hug, and a kiss on the cheek. 'Thanks for comin'.'

The Doctor stepped out as Rose was greeted by Sarah Jane and her son Luke.

'Doctor,' Jack said, standing to attention.

'Jack . . . Don't you dare salute,' the Doctor told him.

Jack grinned and held out his hand. 'Wouldn't dream of it.'

'Boss,' said Mickey as he held up his fist for a bump.

'Mickety-Mick-Mickey,' the Doctor said, bumping fists with him.

'Oh, look at you,' Sarah Jane said to Rose, admiring her bump. 'How long have you got left to go?'

Rose gave her a broad smile. 'Just over three weeks now.'

'I hope you've been taking it easy,' Jack said.

'Wha? Travellin' with him. You're jokin' ain'tcha,' Rose said with a cheeky grin. 'Nah, only jokin'. I've been pampered to within an inch of me life.'

'OI! MISSUS?' a cockney voice shouted across the lawn. 'I want a word with you. You've been neglectin' your duty as a wife.'

'Eh?' Rose asked with a frown as she saw Donna Noble approaching.

'Look at him!' she said, nodding at the Doctor. 'He's still a long streak of nothin'. You ain't been feedin' him, have ya? He's like an anorexic whippet.'

Rose started to laugh and held her arms out as Donna approached with her arms open. 'Come here Sweetheart. How are ya?' Donna asked as she hugged her.

'Brilliant thanks, and even better for seein' you lot.'

'And you, yer skinny Martian. I hope you're lookin' after her,' Donna said, turning her attention to the Doctor.

The Doctor ignored her pretend annoyance and accepted her open armed invitation for a hug. 'Hello Donna It's good to see you too. How's the United Nations? Still united I hope.'

'Hah! They'd have me to answer to if they weren't,' she said with a grin.

A young man with a short Afro hairstyle approached the group and stood beside her. 'Friends of yours?' he asked Donna.

'Oh, Shaun. Yeah, This is the Doctor, and Rose,' she said in introduction.

His eyes went wide in surprise. 'Oh, so this is them. It's great to meet you at last,' he said, shaking their hands. 'Donna talks about you all the time.'

'Ah . . . Well, it's not all bad,' the Doctor joked.

'Jack, Mickey, everybody. I think we're needed in the church. The bride will be arriving any minute now,' a woman with a sing-song Welsh accent announced. They looked across the lawn and saw Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones, and Toshiko Sato walking towards them.

'Okay Gwen, we're coming,' Jack said.

Rose took the Doctor's arm, Donna took Shaun's, and Sarah Jane took Jack's, and they all walked back towards the church.

'Ooh, it's the Doctor,' Gwen said as the group reached them. 'He's taller than he looked on the view screen,' she said in an admiring tone, referring to the incident on the Dalek Crucible.

'He's not that tall,' Ianto said sulkily.

* * *

The evening party was in full swing, with some people on the dance floor, some at the bar, and others sitting in small groups at tables renewing old friendships, or forging new ones.

Rose was gobsmacked when she realised that Mickey had chosen Jack as his best man. What was he thinking? But as Mickey had said, Captain Cheesecake was the best man, woman, or indeterminate for the job.

And he was right. The service went without a hitch, and the speech bordered on the obscene. Martha's father, Clive laughed until tears rolled down his cheeks, which were made worse by her mother, Francine's look of disapproval.

'Doctor, Rose,' Francine said, approaching the table where the Doctor, Rose, Sarah Jane, and the Torchwood team were sitting. 'Thank you for coming.'

The Doctor stood and held out his hand. 'Ah, Mrs. Jones. We wouldn't have missed it for the world. This world, or any other for that matter.'

Francine gave him a lopsided smile as she shook his hand. 'We didn't get off on the right foot when we first met. I was wondering if I could apologise and try again.'

'No apology needed,' he told her kindly. 'It's all water under the bridge.'

'And I said some things . . .' Rose reminded her.

'Yes you did. And I deserved them.'

'Well, that's all sorted then,' the Doctor said cheerily.

'Not quite,' Francine said. 'I need to thank you both for saving the Earth, and bringing Clive and me back together.'

Clive and Francine were trying a reconciliation of their marriage after a life changing incident. When the sun had disappeared and the sky was full of alien planets, they realised that if it was the end of the world, and they were going to die, they wanted to face it together.

And then she had found out from Martha and her new boyfriend Mickey, that the Doctor and his wife had risked their lives to save not only the Earth, but the whole universe. Francine realised that the Doctor's wife Rose had been right when she stood up to her at the Lazarus Laboratories in Southwick.

"Just because your man ran off with a blonde bimbo, and frankly, havin' met ya, I can see why. It doesn't mean that all men are untrustworthy, and it doesn't mean that all blondes are bimbos!" Rose had told her after she had slapped the Doctor's face.

'You're welcome,' the Doctor told her. 'And good luck with your marriage.'

Francine smiled and then turned her attention to Jack. 'Captain Harkness. I get the impression from your speech that a lot of the time you end up naked. I do hope you will buck that trend this evening and keep your clothes on.'

Without waiting for a reply, she turned on her heels and walked away. Jack sat there with his mouth open, whilst everyone else was in fits of laughter.

'Awh, did the nasty lady take away all your fun?' Rose said in a baby talk voice as she stroked his cheek. 'Tell ya what, come and have a dance with me.' She had a mischievous grin on her face as she took his hand and dragged him to his feet. 'Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, drop yer trousers and show me your . . .'

'Rose!' the Doctor called out as he anticipated the end of the rhyme, and Gwen squealed with laughter.

Rose and Jack enjoyed a couple of dances together before returning to their table, where Mickey and Martha had joined the group as they mingled with all the guests.

'Martha. I didn't get chance to say before, but that dress of yours is gorgeous,' said Rose.

'Oh, thanks. I love it,' Martha replied. 'That outfit of yours looks good on you as well. Oh, and by the way, did you contact Dr. Matthews at the antenatal clinic?'

Rose smiled at her concern. 'Yeah. She's lovely. She's sorted me out with a Midwife and everythin'.'

'Good. She's a brilliant Obstetrician, and she's affiliated to UNIT, so she's signed the Official Secrets act . . . y'know, just in case . . .' she let the end of that sentence fade away. Her friend, the Doctor was an alien. Her friend Rose was human, and their hybrid baby would attract a lot of scientific interest.

'And you will call me when it starts, won't you?' Martha asked her. 'Any time, day or night, I'll come to the hospital with you.'

Rose hugged her. 'Thanks for that. It means a lot to me.' She looked over to her husband, who was smiling at her. 'To us,'

* * *

['Oof!'] the Doctor heard in his head as he lay in bed in the early morning darkness. He also felt the cramp like discomfort from his wife's lower abdomen.

'Love? Are you all right?' he whispered into the darkness.

'Oh, felt that did ya? Yeah, I think it's started.'

'Should we get going then?' he asked anxiously as he put the bedside light on. They were in a hotel suite on Karas don Kazra don Slava, where they'd been watching the intelligent sand create works of art out of itself, and listening to the singing fish.

'Nah. The Midwife, and that booklet from the clinic say that it could be hours yet. Apparently, I have to trust my body to tell me when it's ready.'

The Doctor gave her a cheeky smile. 'Is that like when your stomach makes a gurgling noise?'

She laughed. 'That's just when it's tellin' me it's hungry. But we'd better get packed anyway . . . just in case.'

'And then we can have one last walk along the beach before we go.'

* * *

 **The Smith's Residence.**

 **Wimbledon. London.**

 **Tuesday 23rd June. 06:45.**

Mickey and Martha had been back in the country for three days, after flying back from their honeymoon in the Maldives. The day before, Martha had returned to UNIT, where she was a specialist in alien anatomy and physiology. Mickey had travelled to Cardiff to see Jack Harkness as part of his role as liaison operative between UNIT and Torchwood.

She was lying in a semi-foetal position, with Mickey spooning her with his arm around her, gently cupping her breast. He jumped when Martha's phone started to ring. Martha reluctantly opened one eye and looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table.

'Urgh. Somebody's found another alien, I bet,' she muttered under her breath.

She felt her husband's breath on the back of her neck as he yawned and gave her breast a loving tweak. 'Yeah. Why don't aliens learn to keep office hours.'

Without looking at the display, she put the phone to her ear. 'Hello?' she said in a tone of voice that made it clear to the caller that she had just been woken up by the call.

['Martha? It's Rose.']

Martha was suddenly fully awake, and Mickey felt the change in muscle tone that told him something was up. 'Rose, what's up? Are you okay?'

['Er, yeah. Sorry to disturb you so early like, but the Doctor's just landin' the TARDIS at the Royal Hope.']

'Oh my God! Does that mean what I think it means?' she asked excitedly.

'Rose?' Mickey said sleepily. 'Is somethin' the matter?'

Rose gave a nervous laugh. ['Yeah, the baby's on the way. I've been havin' those . . . hang on.'] Martha could hear the turning of pages on a booklet. ['Braxton-Hicks contractions for hours now. Then my waters broke. You should have seen the Doctor's face, it's obvious he ain't a medical doctor.']

Martha laughed as she imagined the Doctor's face. 'And how are the contractions now?'

'Contractions?' Mickey asked in sleepy confusion, waiting for all the bits of information to come together in his head. When they did, the penny dropped. 'Contractions! Rose! She's havin' the baby!'

Martha could hear Rose laughing on the other end of the phone as she'd listened to his thought processes. 'Bingo!' Martha said with a grin.

['The contractions are strong and regular now, so I phoned Dr Matthews on the number she gave me. She's gettin' everythin' ready for when we arrive.']

'That's great Rose. Thanks for letting me know. I'm on my way, we'll see you soon.'

['Thanks Martha. See ya later.']

Martha ended the call, and selected a number. She turned in Mickey's arms to face him and stole a quick kiss while she waited for the call to be answered.

['Doctor Martha Smith,'] the American drawl of Jack Harkness said. ['And so soon after your honeymoon. Is there something Mickey Mouse needs my help with?'] Jack said with as much innuendo as he could muster.

'In your dreams Captain Cheesecake,' Mickey said as he overheard the conversation.

'Behave Captain. Where are you at the moment, because I've just had a call from Rose and there's a situation developing at the Royal Hope Hospital.'

['Ah. Are we talking the imminent arrival of a Human-Alien hybrid by any chance?']

'Oh don't make it sound so clinical and threatening. Our friends are having a baby.'

Jack chuckled. ['Only joking. I think it's fantastic. I'll start making my way over there. Should be there in an hour or two . . . Oh, and Martha. In answer to your question, you really don't want to know where I am at the moment . . . or more specifically, who's bed I'm in.'] The call disconnected without him saying another word.

'Come on then Loverboy,' Martha said to Mickey. 'We've got a hospital to get to.'

* * *

 **The Mezzanine.**

 **Royal Hope Hospital.**

 **Chancellor Street, London.**

Rose was sitting on a comfortable Medi-couch in the TARDIS Medi-bay, her back propped up by the elevated back of the couch. She was slick with sweat, and her hair stuck to the sides of her face. She had just breathed through another contraction.

The Doctor wiped her forehead with a towel. 'You okay?'

'Well, apart from tryin' to push a bowlin' ball out my fanny . . . yeah, I'm fine.'

Martha snorted a laugh, along with both the Midwife, Linda, and her Obstetrician, Patricia.

'You're doing fine Rose,' Linda told her. 'You are nearly fully dilated.'

'How's your pain?' Patricia asked her.

Rose smiled at her. 'I haven't got any, just an uncomfortable tightness.'

Patricia frowned. In her experience, Rose should be feeling some pain by now. Martha saw her look of concern and looked to the Doctor, who seemed quite pleased with himself.

'It's the Medi-bed. It's releasing endorphins, and blocking the neurotransmitters in her pain receptors,' he told them.

'That is incredible,' Patricia said. 'So, where are we exactly? I can understand the blindfold when you brought us here, because this technology must be beyond top secret.'

'Well, to be honest,' the Doctor started as he ran his fingers through his hair. 'The blindfolds were just to make it easier for you when you were in here.'

'Eh?' Linda said. When he brought them on board, he wanted them to be focussed on Rose, and not distracted by a ship that was far too big for the box that contained it.

Rose and Martha giggled. 'You'll understand when you leave,' Rose told them, and then felt another contraction. 'Oooooh. Here we go again.'

'Okay Rose, just breath, breath. One more time and you should be ready.'

'Arghhh . . . I feel like I want to push!'

['Rose,'] the Doctor said, and his voice resonated in her mind. ['Relax . . . breath. We are in New New York, looking across the New Hudson. Can you see the cars flying into the city? Smell the apple grass?']

'Yeah, I can. We're lyin' on your coat talkin' about how the humans colonised New Earth.'

Dr Matthews studied the monitoring equipment. 'I don't know what you did Doctor, but whatever it was, it worked.'

'It certainly did,' Linda said. 'You're fully dilated now Rose. Next time, just push.'

'Oh, at last,' Rose said with a sigh of relief.

It wasn't long before another contraction came, and Rose started to push down. She gripped the Doctor's hand, and he gave a squeeze of encouragement back. The contraction eased off, and Rose flopped back onto the semi erect back of the bed, taking gasping breaths.

'The head is out!' Linda the Midwife told them. Rose instinctively reached down to feel, and Linda directed her fingers to gently stroke the head of their baby. The Doctor leaned forward to look, and a big grin spread across his face.

Tears welled in Rose's eyes. 'Oh, I can feel it. After all these months, it's finally here.'

'One more push should do it.'

The next contraction came, and Rose doubled up with the effort of pushing. 'Garrrgh,' she groaned as she felt the small body being squeezed out of hers, like toothpaste out of a tube.

There was a wet "flop" sound, and Martha, Patricia, and Linda heard the niggling, first cries of protest from the little bundle of life that had been squirted into this world. Rose and the Doctor also heard the gentle cry, but also heard something else in their heads, courtesy of the TARDIS.

['Urgh. Not Dark! Not Warm! Don't like it! Scared!']

Rose blinked through her tears of joy, and looked up at her husband in wide eyed amazement. 'Oh-my-God! Was that . . ?'

The Doctor nodded enthusiastically, his mop of hair lagging behind the rest of his head, his eyes moist with his own tears of happiness. 'Yep. That's our . . .'

'It's a girl!' Linda told them. The Doctor could have found that out when Rose first told him she was pregnant, but they wanted it to be a surprise. It didn't matter to them if it was a boy or a girl, what mattered was that it was theirs.

The Midwife wrapped their daughter in a soft blanket and rested her on Rose's chest, where she wrapped her protective arms around her and gently stroked her head.

'Hello Sweetheart,' Rose cooed. 'You're here at last.'

'Oh she's gorgeous Rose,' Martha said.

'Course she is,' the Doctor told her. 'She's our daughter.'

['Ooh, the drumbeat. My Mummy. Not scared now . . . Like this,'] they felt their daughter thinking, and quietly laughed together.

In the kitchen of the TARDIS, Mickey was sitting at the dining table drinking a mug of tea whilst he told his friends about his incredible honeymoon. Jack was sitting opposite him, goading him with friendly innuendo and waiting for all the lurid details.

Sarah Jane was giving Jack a long suffering smile, the sort that a mother gives a wayward child who is embarrassing them by asking their granny why she has a moustache. Jack had swung by her house and picked her up on the way. He knew that she would want to be there for her friends.

Mickey had detoured through the Powell Estate, and picked up Shareen and Keisha for the same reason. With neither the Doctor nor Rose having any family in this universe, these friends were the closest they'd got to family. At the moment, Sarah Jane was mothering them and trying to lessen the effect of meeting Jack for the first time. He tended to be a bit "full on".

'Oi, Captain!' Donna said from the breakfast bar. 'Wind yer neck in. You'll be corruptin' these sweet, innocent young ladies here.'

Shareen and Keisha laughed. 'Oh, I ain't sweet,' Keisha said.

'She ain't innocent either,' Shareen said with a grin.

'See!' Jack said with a wicked grin. 'Girls after my own heart.'

'It's a girl!' Martha declared as she walked into the kitchen.

There was a chorus of "brilliants", "fantastics" and "wonderfuls" from the assembled guests.

'And is everything all right?' Sarah Jane asked Martha in her capacity as a doctor.

Martha smiled. 'Mother and daughter are just fine, and the father has a dopey grin on his face. Just let Linda the Midwife clean up, and then you can go through and say hello.'

'Oh, I nearly forgot,' Jack said. 'There's a tradition we have to observe on these occasions.' He went over to the wine rack and selected a bottle of champagne. 'Grab some glasses Donna, we'll take them through and wet the baby's head.'

When the group entered the Medi-bay, Rose was just handing their daughter to the Doctor, who was sitting next to her on the bed. Once again, they felt a thrilling shiver down their spines as another of the visions they had shared from the Chameleon Arch watch became a fixed point in history.

Sarah Jane handed Rose a bouquet of flowers and kissed her on the cheek. 'Congratulations Sweetheart.'

'Oh thank you,' Rose said. 'They're beautiful.'

'And so is she,' Sarah Jane replied, nodding at the baby being cooed over by the group. Rose gave her a warm smile and held her hand. Lately, Rose had grown a lot closer to Sarah Jane, and it was almost as if she had become a surrogate mother to her.

And she was right. Since the Dalek Crucible incident, when Sarah Jane had been in the TARDIS and had spoken to Mickey about Rose and Jackie, she realised that Rose missed having her mother there to talk things over with.

'Has she got a name yet?' Sarah Jane asked them.

Rose looked at the Doctor before answering. When she had been in the Library Planet computer, she had lived a life as a single mother. She had given birth to their daughter, and named her Andrea Suzette, her mother's last two names.

'Andrea, Mom's middle name,' Rose started.

'And Susan, after my granddaughter,' the Doctor finished.

'Ahhh, that's nice,' Shareen said, and then thought about it. 'Hang on . . . granddaughter? How can he have a granddaughter?' she asked Rose.

Keisha, Patricia, and Linda were wondering the same thing as their friends laughed, as though they were enjoying a private joke.

'He's older than he looks,' Rose told them.

'Me too,' announced Jack with a playful smile as he poured the champagne. 'We use the same moisturiser.'

'You do not!' Donna said, giving him a playful slap on the arm. She turned to the Doctor and Rose. 'I meant to ask before, at the weddin', where did you get this one from?'

'Get this one from?' Jack said in mock offence. 'You make me sound like a stray dog.'

'Well if the cap fits,' Donna shot back with a grin.

'I'll have you know I saved Rose's life when she literally fell into my arms.'

'And women have been fallin' for ya ever since I suppose,' Donna replied as she took a glass from him.

'More like the men have,' Mickey said with a lopsided smile, accepting his champagne.

'Oh you know me so well, Mickey Mouse. You broke my heart when you married Martha.'

Rose and Martha were giggling at their banter, and at the astonished looks on Barbara and Linda's faces.

With all the champagne handed out, Jack raised his glass. 'A toast . . . To Andrea Susan.'

'Andrea Susan,' everyone echoed, and took a sip of their wine.

'And to her remarkable parents,' Sarah Jane said. 'Two of the most remarkable people I have ever met.'

'Here, here,' Martha interrupted.

'To the Doctor and Rose,' Sarah Jane finished.

'The Doctor and Rose.'


	2. The Marriage of Sarah Jane

**Chapter 2**

 **The Marriage of Sarah Jane**

Rose was sitting up in their bed, with her six week old daughter in her arms as she suckled on her breast. The bedroom door opened and the Doctor entered, carrying a breakfast tray.

Rose looked up from nursing Andrea and gave him a heart melting, contented smile. 'Mornin'.'

'Morning Love,' he said as he put the tray on the bed and leaned forward to kiss his daughter on the head and his wife on the lips, before climbing under the duvet beside her.

They had quickly fallen into a daily routine based around their daughter, and they couldn't recall what life had been like without her. Not that they wanted to, because life was perfect, Andrea was perfect, their marriage was perfect. In fact, everything was just . . . well, perfect.

The Doctor offered her a piece of toast with marmalade, and she accepted it with a kiss on his cheek. They sat in bed and chatted about anything and everything as they ate their breakfast. When Andrea had finished suckling, the Doctor had a cuddle and babbled away to her in baby speak.

When they finished their cups of tea, the Doctor climbed out of bed first and put on his blue suit, before sorting through his ties in the wardrobe.

'What do you think?' he asked, holding up a light blue swirly tie and a striped maroon tie.

'Er, maroon today,' Rose said with a smile.

The Doctor nodded with a grin and left the bedroom. Rose pulled on a pair of jeans and a purple blouse, and then dressed Andrea in a white babygrow.

When she eventually joined her husband in the console room, there was an urgent beeping coming from one of the panels.

'Is that an alarm?' Rose asked as she cradled Andrea in her arms and looked at the monitor.

'Not as such,' the Doctor told her. 'It's more of a "I think you should look at this" kind of beep.'

'Right . . . And what does the old girl think you should look at?'

The Doctor was tapping the keys and examining the results. 'Oh look,' he said with an open mouthed smile. 'It's Sarah Jane. Brilliant!'

'What's she up to then?' Rose asked enthusiastically. She relished the opportunity to show off Andrea to her honorary Aunt.

'Getting married by the look of it.'

'What? Our Sarah Jane . . ? Gettin' married?'

'Apparently, yeah,' he said, and then frowned. 'Hang on, that's not right. That's SO not right.'

'What is it? What's wrong?'

'It's the groom . . . he's dead.'

Rose looked confused. 'What d'ya mean "he's dead"? Are you tellin' me she's marryin' a zombie?'

'Might as well be,' he said, rubbing the back of his neck. 'His time line ended a few months ago when he fell down the stairs at his home.'

'So how can he be marryin' Sarah Jane?'

'That, is a very good question. They're in a restaurant together, why don't we go and ask him.' He ran around the console, adjusting the controls as he went. As he activated the materialise / dematerialise lever, the Time Rotor started to stutter.

'That's not right,' Rose said with concern. 'It's not done that before.'

The Doctor pulled the lever down again, putting them back into the Vortex. 'Something is preventing us from landing,' he explained. He checked the monitor. 'It's a temporal schism; it's preventing us from materialising.'

'How can a zombie do that?' Rose asked, stroking Andrea's head.

'Oh this is way beyond the ability of a human, alive, dead, or undead. I'm trying to punch through the schism and lock onto Sarah Jane,' he told her as he ran around the console like a Tasmanian Devil.

He threw the lever, and once again the Time Rotor started stuttering. 'Come on, come on. You can do it old girl,' he encouraged. There was a bang, and sparks flew from the console.

'Arghh,' he growled in frustration before putting them back into the Vortex. He continued to wrestle the controls to find a way of circumventing the schism.

'There's some sort of dampening field around her,' he told Rose. 'It's changing her perception of her life, influencing her decisions.'

'Hang on; didn't that beetle thing do the same on Shan Shen?'

'Yeah. This has got the Trickster written all over it. And that means if I do this . . .' He made some more adjustments and flipped the materialise / dematerialise lever with a flourish.

The Time Rotor started to stutter again, and this time he compensated for the distortion of the schism, knowing how it had been created and who had created it. The Time Rotor stabilised, and there was a gentle "clump" as the TARDIS landed.

'I don't suppose it's any use asking you to stay here with Andrea while I go and sort this out, is there?' he asked his wife, who was shrugging on the baby harness.

'Not a chance,' she replied, in a tone of voice that told him there was no room for negotiation.

'Thought not,' he said with a smile as he fastened the harness and helped her secure their daughter against her chest.

When he was satisfied that Andrea was securely fastened, he shrugged on his long, brown coat and held out his hand for his wife. 'Right then . . . allons-y.'

'Ooh, this is posh,' Rose said, as they stepped out into the reception hall of a large, country hotel.

The Doctor looked around, and heard a voice coming from a doorway past the reception desk.

['Now, I have to ask this question. If any person can show just cause or impediment why they may not be joined together, let them speak now or forever hold their peace.']

'That's our cue. Come on,' the Doctor said, grabbing Rose's hand and bursting through the doors. 'Stop this wedding now!'

Sarah Jane looked around in surprise. 'What?'

'What's going on?' an Asian woman asked.

'Who the hell are they?' the man standing next to her asked.

Sarah Jane's son, Luke, looked at the Doctor and Rose in open mouthed disbelief. 'I don't believe it.'

'Who're they?' a young Asian girl asked Luke.

A robotic dog rolled out from under a table where it had been concealing itself. 'Master!'

'I said, stop this wedding,' the Doctor reiterated as a strong wind started to blow through the room.

'Alert! Alert! Danger, Mistress!' K9 called out.

'Stop! Get away from him!' the Doctor warned as he struggled against the gale.

'No! Peter, no!' Sarah Jane protested as he held her hands tight.

'Don't be afraid, Sarah Jane. It's the Angel,' he told her as skeins of bright light swirled around to produce a faceless figure in white.

'The Trickster!' the young Asian girl cried out in alarm.

Luke looked over to his mother. 'Mum! Mum!'

Rose tried to call out a warning as she crouched down against the force of the storm. 'Sarah!'

'Trickster, let her go!' the Doctor demanded.

'Too late, Time Lord. You're mine, Sarah Jane Smith. Mine forever.'

'SARAHHHHHH!' the Doctor shouted through the noise of the tempest as he reached out for her.

Sarah Jane reached out towards his outstretched hand. 'DOCTOR!'

The Trickster, Peter and Sarah Jane vanished.

* * *

'Luke? Luke Smith,' the Doctor said as the youngster came back to consciousness.

'Doctor?' Luke asked with a frown. He had only met him once, at Martha and Mickey's wedding.

'That's me. Good to meet you again.'

'What . . . what happened? Mum and the Trickster.' He tried to sit up quickly.

'Luke, Luke, Luke, Luke, listen to me. Everything's going to be all right. I can find Sarah. I can bring her back. I promise. But I need you to be strong for me, just like you were before.' He gave Luke a wink. 'I know you can do it.'

Luke's friends started to wake up, and Rose was kneeling beside them.

'Who are you?' the dark skinned youth asked her.

'I'm Rose, this is Andrea,' she said, stroking her daughter's head. 'And that's the Doctor.'

'Hello,' the Doctor said, striding over and pulling the dark skinned lad onto his feet by his hand. 'Clyde,' he said cheerfully. 'And that will be Rani.'

'What? How'd you know my name?' Clyde asked as the Doctor knelt down and listened to the floor.

Rani's eyes went wide. 'Wait a moment. You must be. It's you, isn't it?'

'That's me,' he said as he hurried down the red carpet and listened to the floor by the door.

'The Doctor,' Rani said.

'That's him,' Luke told them. He looked over to Rose. 'And this his wife, Rose.'

'Hello,' Rose said with a smile.

'I hope you're as good as Sarah Jane says you are,' Clyde said.

'Well, you know journalists, always exaggerating,' the Doctor said as he stood up and looked around the room. 'But yeah, I'm pretty amazing on a good day.'

'Take no notice of him,' Rose said with a grin. 'He's being modest. He's pretty amazin' on a bad day. On a good day, he's brilliant!'

He clicked his tongue and gave her a cheeky wink as K9 rolled towards him. 'Master, query. Where is Mistress Sarah Jane?'

He held his arms out and stooped down. 'K9! Did you miss me? Did you miss me, eh?' he said in a baby talk voice.

'Repeat. Whereabouts of Sarah Jane? Where is she?' K9 insisted.

'Where are we?' Clyde asked as they looked out of the window.

'And where did every body go?' Rose added.

'There's been a dimensional shift. Time's moved on but us, and this entire building, we've been left behind,' the Doctor told them as he and Rose joined them at the window.

'There's nothing out there,' Rani observed. The hotel, and the bit of ground it stood on, were floating in white limbo.

'I said all along, I knew there was something wrong about all of this,' Clyde told his friends. He turned to the Doctor and Rose. 'And what exactly is going on?'

'I'll explain later,' the Doctor told them as he examined another window.

The three friends started to speak at once. Rose tried to calm them down and reassure them, when there was a deafening racket from a football rattle behind her.

'Shush,' the Doctor told them kindly. 'Here's the answer to all your questions . . . Yes, that was the Trickster. Yes, we're trapped. Yes, I'm the only one who can get us out of the trap. Yes, I'm going to bring Sarah Jane, and your mum and dad, and all the others back safe, but I can't do any of it without you.'

'You . . . you need us?' Clyde asked hesitantly.

'Just like Sarah Jane needs ya,' Rose reassured them.

The Doctor spun the rattle once and nodded at Rose. 'Exactly!'

'My mum and dad, where are they?' Rani asked him.

'Just go along with him, Rani,' Luke advised. 'I saw him save the world.' He was referring to the time when the Doctor towed the Earth back from the Medusa Cascade.

'You helped me save the world, Lukey boy,' the Doctor said as he playfully patted his cheeks. 'Right. Come on, we can use the TARDIS. I assume everybody knows what the TARDIS is, unless you've really not been paying attention.' The three friends smiled and nodded.

'Oh, you are SO gonna love this,' Rose said excitedly.

'And,' the Doctor said, running for the door. 'Allons-y!'

They ran past the reception desk and skidded to a halt. 'Oh, no, no, no, no. It was there. It was right there,' the Doctor whined, and then heard the stuttering sound of the TARDIS. 'Wait, wait, wait.'

The TARDIS was trying to materialise in the corner of the hallway.

'That noise. I've heard it before,' Rani told them.

'That was us, trying to break through,' Rose explained.

'Got knocked back by the Trickster,' the Doctor added.

'Temporal schism is preventing TARDIS materialisation,' K9 announced.

Clyde looked at the partially materialised TARDIS. 'Wait a minute. That's the TARDIS? It's just a wooden box.'

'Come on Old Girl, you can do it,' Rose encouraged.

'More power. Come on!' the Doctor called out, but the TARDIS faded away. 'Okay, got no TARDIS. It can't materialise here until time moves forward.'

'What, so we're trapped here, wherever this is?' Rani complained.

'No,' he told them. 'Because what have I got? I've got Rose.'

'Goes without sayin'. We're a team me and 'im,' Rose said.

'And we've got K9.'

'Affirmative,' K9 confirmed.

'And we've got you three. And any friend of Sarah Jane Smith is a friend of ours.

'But where is this? What's happened to the rest of the world?' Clyde asked.

K9 answered that one. 'Our present location nowhere, no when.'

'No when?' Luke queried.

'It's Time Lord speak,' Rose told him. 'You'll get used to it.'

'Look at the clocks,' the Doctor instructed, and they could see the second hand on the wall clock behind the reception desk was "bouncing" on twenty three.

'Time's stopped,' Luke realised.

Clyde looked at his wrist watch. 'What? You're joking.'

Luke realised he'd made a mistake when he saw the television. 'No. Time hasn't stopped. This second's on a loop. Twenty three seconds and twenty three minutes past three o'clock.'

'And we're caught inside it. In this one second,' Rose said, and the Doctor nodded.

'But again, where is Sarah Jane?' Clyde asked.

'I think she's right here,' the Doctor told him.

Rani was thinking it through. 'So we've been kept behind in this second . . .'

'Affirmative Mistress Rani,' K9 said.

'. . . But the rest of the world, Mum and Dad and everyone else, they've moved on from here, forwards in time. Why has the Trickster trapped us here?'

'Oh, come on, Rani,' the Doctor encouraged as he finished listening to the floor and stood up. 'You know the answer to that.'

'We're Sarah Jane's friends, all of us. Her best friends.'

He took of his glasses and put them in his pocket. 'Yeah. Which means?' He ran up the wide staircase.

'Hostages,' she realised. 'He can use us to get at her.'

'We've met the Trickster before,' Clyde said. 'But we've never found out who he is.'

The Doctor walked back slowly down the stairs. 'The Trickster is a creature from beyond the universe. Forever trying to break in to our reality, manifest himself.'

'He put a beetle on my back to try and stop me meeting the Doctor,' Rose told them.

'He's one of the Pantheon of Discord,' the Doctor continued.

'That's a good name for a band,' Clyde joked.

Rose laughed. 'Yeah, actually, not bad.'

'He's an eternal exile, who exists to wreak havoc,' the Doctor said menacingly, but then suddenly brightened. 'But we can fight him, the six of us. And we can win.'

His sonic screwdriver started beeping in his pocket. 'Oh! Ha, that's it. A time trace. Just a hint of Sarah Jane.' He started following the signal. 'Ooh, she's close.'

The Doctor climbed up on a table and continued scanning.

Rani shivered. 'What was that . . ? Felt like someone just walked over my grave.'

The Doctor jumped down and scanned her. 'Oh, oh, oh, she's here. She's here! SARAH!'

'Sarah Jane,' Rani corrected him. 'She doesn't like being called Sarah.'

Rose smirked. 'She does by him.'

'K9,' the Doctor called out.

'Scanning, Master.'

['Doctor! Doctor!'] they heard Sarah Jane call out from the entrance doors.

'Mum. That was her,' Luke said.

'K9, isolate the time trace,' the Doctor instructed.

'Affirmative, Master.'

It was taking too long. 'K9?'

'Temporal schism divided in two, Master.'

'Yes, of course. We're trapped here in three, twenty three, twenty three, and Sarah Jane's trapped too, just in another second.'

'Hold on. You said you'd explain later,' Clyde reminded him. 'Well, it's later. Please explain.'

'The Trickster doesn't want us helping Sarah, so he's separated us, trapped us in two different seconds.' He heard the echo of Sarah Jane from above them.

He stood up from talking to K9 and looked at the ceiling. 'Oh, oh, she's upstairs. Come on. Rose, you wait here with Luke and K9, watch for the TARDIS, you see it coming back, shout the place down.'

'Orders accepted, Master.'

'Yes Master,' Rose said with a saucy smile, making Luke, Rani and Clyde snigger. 'He can be SO bossy,' she said in a conspiratorial whisper.

'You two with me. Spit spot,' he commanded, and ran up the stairs. He followed the signal on his sonic screwdriver into . . . the room downstairs where he had first seen Sarah Jane and interrupted the wedding.

'How did we end up here again?' Rani asked in confusion.

'It's a spatial loop mixed up with a temporal loop,' Clyde told her. The Doctor raised an admiring eyebrow.

'How did you work that one out?' Rani enquired.

'Well, we've been doing this for a while now. I have taken notes.'

The Doctor turned in a circle, scanning the room 'Come on, come on, come on, Sarah. Let me find you.' He got a hit on the readings. 'She's here. If I can narrow the link ratio.'

'Doctor,' the Trickster said, now dressed in its black robe.

'Ah. You look better in black. Or is white the new black?'

'At last. Doctor. I could feel this moment reverberating back through the ages. The meeting of the Pantheon of Discord and the last of the Time Lords.'

'I've known the legends of the Pantheon since I was a little boy. I've fought your shadows and your changelings. I never thought we'd actually meet.'

'And I know the legends of the Doctor. The man of ice and fire, who walked among gods, who once held the Key to Time in his hands. Now he is surrounded by children.'

'They're my friends,' he said quietly. 'Which reminds me, you're looking a bit lonely for a Pantheon.'

'I embody multitudes. And who are you, the man who has lost everybody, to talk to me of loneliness, when the Gate is waiting for you?'

'What do you mean?'

'Sarah Jane Smith is my prize. Even you, Doctor, didn't realise how wonderful she is.'

'What do you want with her?' He asked, with a hint of menace in his voice.

'What I always want from any of those I visit. Her agreement. Goodbye, Doctor.' The Trickster vanished.

The Doctor mulled over what it had said. 'Her agreement. The power of words. She says I do, and . . . YES, THAT'S IT!'

'That's what?' Clyde asked him.

'She promises to love and honour her husband, the wedding ring goes on and then she's agreed to it. She's totally under the Trickster's power. Marital bliss, but she forgets all about this. She starts living a new life.'

Rani took up the train of thought. 'Forgetting about her old life protecting the Earth'.

'And the planet's wide open, so aliens can just barge in?' Clyde finished.

'Without Sarah, without you lot saving the world from your attic in Ealing, there'll be chaos and destruction. Meat and drink to the Trickster.'

'As if she's gonna say yes,' Clyde scoffed.

'But she will, won't she. Because we're here.'

The room filled with the sound of the Time Rotor engines. 'TARDIS! Beautiful. Yes! It's homing in on me. Emergency program, protecting the pilot. Of course. Partial materialisation.'

Luke and Rose ran into the room. 'What's happening?'

'Look, that's pure Artron energy. TARDIS power. Equal and opposite to the Trickster's power. That's how we can fight him.' The Doctor unlocked the TARDIS door and let Rose and Andrea inside. He held his hand out for the others. 'Run!'

A strong wind was pushing them back. 'Doctor!' Rani called out.

'Come on, all of you, get in. Come on now. The Doctor managed to grab Clyde's hand, but he couldn't pull him in. The door slammed shut and Clyde was held against it with Artron energy playing all over him as the TARDIS dematerialised.

'Doctor! Where are the kids?' Rose asked as he ran up the ramp.

'They couldn't get past the force of the schism, and the TARDIS couldn't hold its position. It's like trying to hold a bubble underwater; it's always being pushed to the surface.'

'Well, can we push it back underwater again?'

'I'm trying to lock onto Sarah Jane's second. If I can squeeze in there, I can talk to her and . . .' He hesitated.

'And what?' Rose asked. She saw the look in his eyes. The look that told her it was one of those times where he couldn't fix it.

'Remember I said James' time line ended a few months ago when he fell down the stairs at his home?' Rose nodded, tears stinging her eyes. 'The Trickster is keeping him alive, suspending his time line. Sarah Jane has to refuse his proposal for the Trickster to lose his power over her.'

'And when that happens,' Rose said quietly. 'James dies?' She walked forward and hugged him gently, being careful not to squash their daughter.

He wrapped his arms around her and rubbed her back, realising that these moments of tender, loving support helped him keep his demons at bay.

He glanced at the monitor and saw something interesting. 'Where's that Artron energy coming from?'

He released the hug and went to the monitor, typing commands into the keyboard. 'Hah! It's Clyde. He's using the Artron energy from the outside of the TARDIS to hold the Trickster in limbo. Genius.'

The Doctor materialised the TARDIS in the main suite. 'Rose, hold her steady while I talk to Sarah.' He ran down the ramp, and opened the door. 'Sarah.'

'Doctor.'

'Got to be quick. The TARDIS can't stabilise. Clyde's keeping the Trickster busy for the moment. Oh, those three are just brilliant.'

'Doctor, what can I do? If I say no, we're trapped here forever. If I say yes, I condemn the world to the Trickster. Either way I lose. There's no way out.'

'It all rests with you, Sarah. Your greatest challenge. The hardest thing you'll ever face in your life.'

'What is it? Tell me what I've got to do.'

'You've fought the Trickster before. You know how he operates, how he can be defeated.'

Sarah Jane shook her head in realisation. 'Oh, no. No.'

'I know you're a good man, Peter. I'm so sorry,' the Doctor said.

Suddenly, Clyde and the Trickster appeared, screaming.

'Clyde!' Sarah Jane called to him.

'I can't hold it,' Clyde told her. He let the Trickster go, and the TARDIS dematerialised.

'Rose? We need to stabilise.'

'The TARDIS has lost the lock. I couldn't hold it.'

He struggled with the controls and managed to lock back onto the reception area at three, twenty three, twenty three. 'Come on. We have to hurry outside before she loses the lock again.'

They ran down the ramp and out the doors into Luke and Rani.

'You came back,' Rani said.

'Course we came back,' Rose said, slightly hurt that they would think that they wouldn't.

'Come on,' the Doctor said, and ran past the reception to the wedding suite.

'Mum,' Luke called out as he saw Sarah Jane on the floor, cradling Clyde on her lap.

'Luke, Doctor. Oh, Doctor.'

The Doctor knelt down behind her and held her shoulders. 'My Sarah Jane. You did it. The trap's broken. Time's moving forward again. We're going home.'

'Hold on!' Luke said.

'We're all going home,' the Doctor said as the time line corrected itself and he found himself at the controls of the TARDIS, with Rose sitting on the jump seat cradling Andrea and feeding her from a bottle.

'What happened?' Rose asked.

'The time line corrected itself, just like the year that never was. We were at the epicentre so we remember the alternate time line.'

'And Sarah Jane . . ?'

The Doctor sighed. 'Yeah. She'll remember falling in love, nearly getting married . . . and losing him.'

'We have to go and see her.'

He looked up from the console and gave her a warm smile. 'Already on it.'

He flicked a switch on the comms panel, and they could hear Luke's voice. ['I can't believe the Doctor ran off like that.']

'We didn't run off!' Rose said indignantly.

['Sudden disappearing acts. That's him all over,'] Sarah Jane said.

The Doctor nodded his head. 'Can't argue with her there though. Come on; let's do a sudden appearing act. That's also me all over.'

Rose laughed and gave him a beaming smile as he landed the TARDIS with a gentle "clump".

['Doctor,'] they heard Sarah Jane say from outside.

He strolled down the ramp and opened the door. 'What do you take me for, Sarah? Just thought I'd go the quick way. Ooh, I like it in here,' he said looking around the attic.

'Can we have a look?' Rani asked.

'What, in the TARDIS? Our TARDIS!' he said menacingly before smiling. 'Course you can, yeah.'

He opened the other door and stood to the side to let everyone inside.

'Oh, wow. It really is, isn't it? It's bigger on the inside,' Clyde said in wonder.

Rose was beaming a smile at them as they moved around the console room. She still loved this bit.

'It's beautiful,' Rani said.

'Transcendental dimensions,' Luke said in awe.

Clyde was at the console. 'Wow, what does this do?'

'Hey, don't touch,' Sarah Jane warned him. She turned to the Doctor. 'You came all that way for me.'

'You're so important. Not just to me. The Trickster wanted to end your story, but it goes on. The things you've done, Sarah, they're pretty impressive, but, oh, the things you're going to do.'

'The future. How about we could go for a ride?' Luke asked.

'Or back. To the dinosaurs, yeah?' Clyde suggested.

'Another planet?' Rani ventured.

'No way. For one thing, you were grounded by the Judoon. And your parents would never forgive me,' Sarah Jane told them.

'You've time for a cup of tea though?' Rose asked.

Sarah Jane smiled and sat beside her, looking down at her honorary niece. 'Hasn't she grown? How old is she now?'

Rose thought about that. 'Six weeks by TARDIS time.'

Sarah Jane nodded. She understood how difficult it was to keep track of time when you travelled in the TARDIS.

'The Doctor keeps time in his head, but the TARDIS took pity on me and put chronometers all over the place so I know what day it is.'

She noticed Sarah Jane looking lovingly at Andrea. 'Would you like to give her the rest of this bottle while I make the tea?'

'Oh, could I?' Sarah Jane said with an enormous smile.

Rose handed Andrea to her and passed her the bottle. 'She's beautiful. You must be very proud.'

'Yeah, we are,' Rose said as she stood and went to the kitchen.

Sarah Jane looked over to the console, where the Doctor was talking to Luke, Rani and Clyde. '. . . And that's the Helmic Regulator. That controls . . .' She smiled and looked back to her niece who was guzzling contentedly on her milk.

'Look at him,' Rose said from behind her. 'In his element when he's got somebody to show off to.' She took cup of tea off the tray and put it next to Sarah Jane.

Sarah Jane laughed. 'Yes. I often thought that's why he had me on board.'

'You and me both,' Rose said as she handed out the drinks.

'Is he good with her?' Sarah Jane asked Rose as she sat beside her.

With that question Rose realised that the Doctor had never told Sarah Jane that he had been a father. 'Yeah. He's a brilliant Dad. He'll cradle her in his arms and babble away to her in that way of his, and she'll just look at him, hangin' on his every word.'

Sarah Jane laughed. 'I can't believe he's the same person that I travelled with all those years ago.'

'What was he like back then? He tells me stories of his adventures, but it would be nice to get a different view.'

And while they drank their teas, Sarah Jane told Rose about their adventures from her point of view, and about the incredible person who called himself the Doctor.

'Right you lot,' Sarah Jane said as she finished her narrative and her tea. 'Time to go.'

Luke, Rani and Clyde reluctantly left the TARDIS. Rose gave Sarah Jane a one armed hug and they kissed.

'Is this the last time I'm ever going to see you?' she asked the Doctor at the door.

'I don't know. I hope not.'

'Goodbye, Doctor, until the next time.'

'Don't forget us, Sarah Jane.'

'No one's ever going to forget you two. The Doctor and Rose, in the TARDIS. The stuff of legends.'


	3. The Waters of Mars

**Chapter 3  
**

 **The Waters of Mars**

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS onto the red, sandy surface, wearing his red spacesuit with yellow helmet, and pushing his two month old daughter in her hover-pram, which was a self contained little spaceship in its own right.

'The red planet,' he said, looking around the desert landscape.

'So where's the Syrtis Major Pleasure dome?' Rose asked as she stepped out behind him.

'That's about another ten years away yet. This is the early pioneer days of the United Nations colonies. Y'know, like the Lewis and Clark expedition across the Wild West, or the Benson and Kane expedition across the planet Sunday,' he explained.

They strolled over to the crater rim and looked down onto a Base with a central dome, five outlying domes, and a shuttle pad connected to the central dome by modular walkways.

'Oh, that's beautiful,' the Doctor said. 'Don't you think so Rose?'

'Eh? Oh yeah, very nice,' she replied, not quite sure what was beautiful about a utilitarian base. But she couldn't help but smile at his big grin in his helmet visor.

'Fledgling humans taking their first steps into the big wide universe . . . Brilliant!' He looked back into the crater.

Rose felt something jab her in the back. 'Er, Doctor . . .'

'Hmm?'

['Rotate slowly,'] a robotic voice said in their helmet intercoms.

They turned around, and saw a little track laying robot holding a futuristic pistol. ['You are under arrest for trespassing. Gadget gadget.']

'I see what you mean about Wild West,' Rose said, as they were escorted down the crater rim towards the Base.

After they had passed through the airlock, they removed their spacesuits, and Rose opened the hover-pram to lift out Andrea and cradle her in her arms.

'State your name, rank, and intention,' an officious woman said, pointing a pistol with blue lights at them.

The Doctor stood in front of Rose, with his hands in the trouser pockets of his blue suit. 'The Doctor,' he said in answer to the first part of her demand. 'Doctor,' he said to the second part, and 'fun,' to the third.

Rose leaned to the side to look around her husband. 'Er, Rose . . . His wife . . . Sight seein',' Rose said, trying to give answers that would show they weren't a threat that needed a gun pointing at them. She then looked down at her daughter. 'Oh, and Andrea . . . Daughter . . . Drink milk, fill her nappy and sleep.'

An Asian man ran into the airlock preparation area. 'What the hell? It's a man . . . And a woman. A man and woman on Mars. How?'

'And a baby!' Rose pointed out, showing him Andrea in her arms who was now looking around with bemused bewilderment as all two month old babies did.

'They were wearing these things,' a woman with an Eastern European accent said, holding up their spacesuits. 'I have never seen anything like them.'

'What did Mission Control say?' the Asian man said.

'They're out of range for ten hours with the solar flares,' the woman replied.

'If we could cut the chat, everyone,' the gun toting woman said.

'Actually, chat's second on my list, the Doctor said. 'The first being gun pointed at me and my family. Which then puts my family second and chat third, I think. Gun, family, chat, yeah. I hate lists. But you could hurt someone with that thing. Just put it down.'

'Oh, you'd like that,' said the woman in a "do you think I'm stupid" tone of voice.

'Can you find me someone who wouldn't?' the Doctor said in an "are you stupid or what?" tone of voice.

'Why should I trust you?'

'You're pointing a gun at his wife and daughter,' Rose reminded her. 'Why'd yer think?'

The Doctor looked over his shoulder at Rose and then turned back to the gun woman. 'Because I give you my word. And forty million miles away from home . . . my word is all you've got.'

The woman paused as she considered what they had said. 'Keep Gadget covering him.'

['Gadget gadget,'] a robotic voice said from the side.

The Doctor looked at the robot, and then at a man with a control panel slung around his neck and animatronic gloves on. 'Oh right, so you control that thing. Auto-glove response.'

'You got it,' the man said. 'To the right.'

The robot turned to the right and said, ['gadget gadget.']

'And to the left.' He turned his glove to the left.

'It's a bit flimsy,' Rose noted.

['Gadget gadget,'] the robot said as it turned to the left.

'Does it have to keep saying that?' the Doctor asked him.

'I think it's funny,' the man said.

The Doctor pulled a face. 'I hate funny robots.'

['Excuse me, boss,'] a woman's voice said from the gunslinger's handset. ['Computer log says we've got extra people on site. How's that possible?']

'Keep the Biodome closed,' the boss woman with the gun told her. 'And when using open comms, you call me Captain.'

['Yeah, but . . .'] The captain ended the call.

'They can't be a World State flight, because we'd know about it,' another man said. 'Therefore, he's got to be one of the independents, yeah? Was it the Branson inheritance lot? They've talked about a Mars shot for years.'

The Doctor was blowing out his cheeks. 'Right, yes, okay, you got me. So, I'm the Doctor, and you are?'

'Oh, come on,' the captain said. 'We're the first off-world colonists in history. Everyone on planet Earth knows who we are.'

The Doctor looked around the group in alarm. 'You're the first? The very first humans on Mars? Then this is . . .'

'Bowie Base One,' the captain said with him.

Rose picked up on the alarm in his voice. 'Doctor, what is it?'

He didn't answer. He was still trying to ascertain the facts. 'Number one. Founded July 1st, 2058. Established Bowie Base One in the Gusev Crater. You've been here how long?'

'Seventeen months,' the captain told him.

'2059. It's 2059, right now. Oh! My head is so stupid. You're Captain Adelaide Brooke.' He looked at each member of the group in turn. 'And Ed. You're Deputy Edward Gold. Tarak Ital, MD. Nurse Yuri Kerenski. Senior Technician Steffi Ehrlich. Junior Technician Roman Groom. Geologist Mia Bennett.' He had a sad look on his face. 'You're only twenty seven years old.'

'As I said, Doctor, everyone knows our names,' Adelaide said.

'Oh, they'll never forget them. What's the date, today? What is it? Tell me the exact date.'

'November 21st, 2059,' Adelaide said as though it was obvious.

'Right. Okay, fine,' the Doctor said nervously.

'Love, what's the matter?' Rose asked.

'Is there something wrong?' Steffi asked.

Mia was puzzled. 'What's so important about my age?'

'We should go,' the Doctor said to Rose. 'We really should go. I'm sorry. I'm sorry with all of my hearts, but it's one of those very rare times when I've got no choice. It's been an honour. Seriously, a very great honour to meet you all. The Martian pioneers,' he said as he shook their hands.

'Oh, thank you.' He was about to shake Roman's hand, and realised he had the auto-gloves on. 'Ah . . .' He patted Gadget on what appeared to be its head.

['Gadget gadget.']

He saluted Adelaide. 'Thank you.' He then remembered another two of the crew were absent. 'There's the other two. Hold on. Margaret Cain and Andrew Stone.'

Ed moved to a desk and activated the intercom. 'Maggie, if you want to meet the only new human beings that you're going to see in the next five years, better come take a look.'

Instead of Maggie's voice coming out of the speaker, there was a roar.

'What was that?' Mia asked with concern.

'Oh, we really should go,' the Doctor said quietly.

['Doctor! Tell me what's happenin','] Rose thought to him.

['I don't know, nobody does. When the solar storm is over, the base is gone . . . destroyed by a massive explosion.']

['Oh my God! We've got to get Andrea outta here.']

'This is Central,' Ed said into the intercom. 'Biodome report immediately.'

'Show me the Biodome,' Adelaide commanded.

Ed used the touchscreen to select the Biodome camera. The screen was full of static. 'Internal cameras are down.'

'Show me the exterior,' the captain ordered.

The lights were going out in the biodome. 'I'm going over,' Adelaide said. 'Doctor, with me.'

'Yeah, I'm sorry. Er, I'd love to help, but we're leaving right now.'

'Take their spacesuits,' Adelaide told Steffi. 'Lock them up. This started as soon as you arrived, so you're not going anywhere except with me.'

'You can't do that!' Rose exclaimed.

'I'm the Base Commander, and you're trespassing. So yes I can,' Adelaide told her.

'Trespassing? Metal Mickey over there marched us here at gunpoint! I'd call that kidnapping.'

'Rose, it's all right,' the Doctor said, trying to calm her down. He turned to Adelaide. 'Give my wife her suit and the pram, and I'll come with you.'

Adelaide considered this, and nodded to Steffi.

'No,' Rose said. 'I'm not leavin' here without ya.'

He turned to her and held her shoulders. 'Look, why don't you give Andrea a feed and settle her down in the pram. Then you can put your suit on and wait for me to come back? I'll only be a few minutes.'

Rose chewed her bottom lip in hesitation. He was right though. If theses people weren't going to let them go just yet, she could get ready to leave at the drop of a hat. 'Okay . . . and you'll be right back, yeah?'

'I promise.' He kissed her on the lips, and his daughter on her forehead, before turning and walking away with Adelaide.

'Oi! Captain,' Rose called after them. Adelaide turned. 'If anythin' happens to him . . . you'd better hope it happens to you an' all. Because if it does, I'm gonna come lookin' for ya. You understand?' She gave Adelaide an icy stare that made the Doctor smile. That was pure Jackie Tyler.

Adelaide looked at the Doctor, who raised his eyebrows in a "you'd better believe it" expression, and then back to Rose. The captain was used to being in control and giving orders, but there was something in Rose's eyes that made her hope that nothing happened to the Doctor.

* * *

Rose was sitting on a comfortable chair in the Crew Lounge, cooing to her daughter as she nursed her. 'Who's a hungry girl then?'

'I've made you a coffee,' Mia said as she put a cup on the low table.

'Oh, thanks. that's kind of ya.' Rose took her daughter off her breast and sat her up as she straightened her purple blouse.

'She's beautiful,' Mia said, smiling at Rose. 'Would you like me to hold her while you fasten your blouse?'

'Yeah, that would be great thanks.'

Mia took Andrea in her arms, and gently patted her back. 'I hope you don't mind me asking, but who in their right mind brings a baby out into space? It's dangerous out here.'

Rose looked up at her and frowned. 'You're tellin' me, what with your captain pointin' a gun at us and keepin' us prisoner.'

Mia gave her an embarrassed smile. 'Sorry about that. Adelaide is a stickler for the rules. No I mean space . . . the vacuum, the radiation . . .'

'It's where we live. We're travellers, and our ship is our home. And when we're inside, it's the safest place in the universe.' Andrea belched, which seemed to startle her, and they both laughed. 'You're a natural,' Rose told her.

Mia gave her a half smile and then hesitated. 'What did he mean? The Doctor, when he said I was only twenty seven? He looked so sad.'

It was Rose's turn to hesitate. 'I, er . . . I don't know. You kinda get used to that look when you travel with him. I'd better put her in her pram now,' Rose said, changing the subject. She tucked her daughter into the pram, stroked her auburn hair, and gently brushed her forehead with her lips, before starting to pull on her orange spacesuit.

Rose suddenly felt the Doctor's stress level go up a notch. ['Don't touch her!'] She heard him say.

['Doctor, what's wrong?']

['We've found Margaret Cain in a heap suffering from blunt head trauma.']

['Oh my God. How did that happen?']

['Well, I'm guessing she didn't trip and fall, and the only other person in here with her was Andy Stone. Ed and Yuri are taking her back to the Sickbay. We're going to see if we can find Andy.']

['Okay. Be careful Love.'] She finished pulling on and sealing her spacesuit, so that she only had to clip the helmet on when they were ready to leave.

Mia led Rose back to the control room of the central dome, and Nurse Yuri Kerenski was making an announcement from the Sickbay. ['Captain, good news, it's Maggie. She's awake. She's back with us . . . Hey, how are you, soldier? Just take it easy. Can you remember what happened?']

They heard Maggie speaking from the isolation room. ['I was just working. Then I woke up here.']

['What about Andy? We can't find him, was he all right?'] Adelaide said over her handset.

['I don't know. I just . . .'] Maggie faltered.

['If you remember anything, let me know straight away,'] Adelaide told her.

'Yuri, does she know how she ended up in the tunnel?' Ed asked.

['And keep the comms clear. Everything goes through me, got that?'] Adelaide said tersely.

Rose noticed Ed close his eyes in frustration. 'Who does she think she is?'

Ed looked at her and sighed with a smile. 'She's the captain. She's in charge of this billion dollar installation.'

'An' doesn't she like people to know it,' Rose said, which got a laugh of agreement from everyone.

'But discipline is important in an environment where a lack of concentration could kill everyone,' Steffi told her.

'Hmm, I suppose,' Rose conceded. 'But she doesn't have to be on yer case all the time,' she said to Ed.

Ed appreciated her concern. He liked this young woman who cared about people's feelings. 'It's just her way. You don't get to be the boss of the first Mars colony by being a pushover. She's earned her position, and our respect.'

['This is Sickbay. We have a situation. Maggie's condition has. I don't know. I don't know what it is. It's water, just pouring out,'] they heard Yuri call out.

['Yuri, calm down. Just tell me what's happened to her,'] Adelaide said.

['The skin is sort of broken around the mouth. And she's exuding water, like she's drowning.']

'Yuri, keep her contained. Seal the door at maximum. I'm on my way!' Ed told him.

Rose grabbed the handle of the pram and moved towards him. 'I'm comin' too.'

Ed looked at her in disbelief. 'You're staying here.'

'Y'reckon? And how ya gonna keep me here, point a gun at me like yer boss did?' Rose said defiantly, and then softened her approach. 'Look, if you've got trouble, then that's where the Doctor will be, and that's where I'll be, right by his side.'

Ed sighed in resignation. 'Come on then . . . but you do as I say, agreed?'

Rose gave him her broad smile. 'Agreed.'

In the Sickbay, Rose was looking at Maggie with concern. The skin around her mouth was discoloured and cracked, and water trickled down her chin. Her eyes were wide and staring.

'Has that door got a Hardinger seal?' Adelaide asked as she entered.

'No, just basic,' Ed replied.

Rose turned to see the captain and the Doctor enter the room. 'Oh, Hiya,' she said with a relieved smile.

He slipped his arm around her waist and kissed her. 'Hello. Did you miss me?' he said with a waggle of his eyebrows.

'Nah,' she joked. She always missed him when he wasn't by her side.

'Then the moment she heads for the door, we evacuate. Got that?' Adelaide ordered.

Rose rolled her eyes. As if that wasn't obvious.

Ed turned and looked at the readout of Maggie's vital signs. 'Pulse is low. Electrical activity in the brain seems to be going haywire.'

'Can she talk?' Adelaide asked.

'Don't know,' Yuri replied. 'She was talking before we noticed the change, but . . .'

Adelaide called to her. 'Maggie, can you hear me? Do you know who I am? Your commanding officer, Captain Adelaide Brooke. Can you tell me what happened?' Maggie ignored her, looking around at the people in the room.

'Hoorghwall in schtochman ahn warrellinsh och fortabellan iin hoorgwahn,' the Doctor said. Maggie turned her head and stared at him.

'What language is that?' Ed asked.

'Ancient North Martian,' the Doctor told him.

'Don't be ridiculous,' Adelaide said dismissively.

'It's like she recognised it,' Ed tried to reason with her.

Rose was beginning to wish that Ed was the base commander instead of Adelaide. He was more flexible in his thinking, and willing to investigate any idea, no matter how outlandish it might seem. Captain Bossy on the other hand, only seemed to be interested in ridiculing the Doctor and criticizing anything that he said.

She'd had enough of her dictatorial attitude, and was about to tell her so, when the Doctor squeezed her around the waist to get her attention.

['She's scared,'] he told her in her head. ['They all are. They've trained for years to make this colony a success, having gone through every disaster scenario they could think of to deal with whatever Mars could throw at them.']

['I bet they didn't see this one comin','] Rose thought back.

['Nah . . . How could they? And now Adelaide is trying to save their lives the only way she knows how. With her training, experience, and her knowledge of how she thinks the universe works.']

Rose's shoulders slumped as all the indignation and animosity melted away. ['Yeah. I suppose she's doin' her best, or what she thinks is best.']

The Doctor carried on the verbal conversation. 'And her eyes are different. They're clear, like she's closer to human.'

'Not close enough for me,' said Ed.

'Where do you get your water from?' the Doctor asked, trying to figure out what was going on.

'The ice field,' Adelaide answered. 'That's why we chose the crater. We're on top of an underground glacier.'

'Tons of water. Marvellous,' he said sarcastically.

'But every single drop is filtered. It's screened. It's safe,' Yuri declared.

'Looks like it, yeah,' Rose said, looking into Maggie's eyes.

'If something was frozen down there. A viral life form held in the ice for all those years . . .' Ed theorised.

The Doctor was doubtful. 'Look at her mouth. All blackened, like there's some sort of fission. This thing, whatever it is, doesn't just hide in water, it creates water. Tell me what you want.'

Yuri had an idea about that. 'She was looking at the screen. At Earth. She wanted Earth. A world full of water.'

'Captain, With me,' Ed said.

Adelaide and Ed turned their backs on Maggie and walked away as Ed talked. 'I'm sorry, but it's an unknown infection and it's spreading. That demands Action Procedure One.

'Do you think I don't know that?' Adelaide said sharply.

'I think you need reminding,' he said tactfully.

Adelaide nodded. 'Yeah.'

'Well, at least I'm good for something,' he joked with a lopsided smile.

Adelaide had a smile of her own. 'Now and again.'

'That's almost a compliment. Things must be serious.'

The Doctor had overheard the conversation. 'Sorry, sorry, but, Action One, that means evacuation, yeah?'

Adelaide nodded. 'We're going home.' She took out her handset. 'This is Captain Brooke. I'm declaring Action One. Repeat to all crewmembers, this is Action One with immediate effect. Evacuate the base. Steffi, what's your estimate on shuttle viability?'

['It's a nine month flight. It'll take us at least three hours to load up everything we need.']

'You've got twenty minutes. And give me a report on Andy and Tarak.'

['Still in the Biodome tunnel. They're just standing there, like they're waiting.']

'Keep an eye on them, and make that twenty minutes fifteen. Ed, line up the shuttle. Go straight to ignition status.'

'Doing it now,' he said, heading out the door.

'But what about Maggie?' Yuri asked.

'She stays behind,' Adelaide told him. 'We've got no way to contain her on board. Close this place down. I want the power directed to the shuttle.'

The Doctor had seen a problem that Adelaide hadn't. 'Of course, the only problem is . . .'

'Thank you, Doctor. Your spacesuit will be returned. And good luck to you and your family,' Adelaide said.

'The problem is, this thing is clever. It didn't infect the birds or the insects in the biodome, it chose the humans. You were chosen. And I told you, Adelaide, water can wait. Tarak changed straight away, but when Maggie was infected it stayed hidden inside her, no doubt so it could infiltrate the Central Dome. Which means . . .'

Adelaide saw where it was going. 'Any one of us could already be infected. We've all been drinking the same water.'

'And if you take that back to Earth, one drop. Just one drop . . .'

'But we're only presuming infection. If we can find out how this thing got through. When it got through. Yuri, continue with Action One. I'm going to inspect the ice field.' Adelaide left the Sickbay without another word. Yuri started to stack medical supplies, ready for evacuation.

'Right. We should leave. Finally, We should leave,' he said to Rose. 'Yuri, me old mate, no point in me seeing the ice field. No point at all. No,' he said unconvincingly.

Rose knew that tone of voice, that look. 'Doctor?'

He gave her an apologetic smile. 'Sorry Love. Take Andrea to the Central Dome and wait for me there. I'll be right back. Adelaide!'

Rose pushed the hover-pram along the corridor to the hub of the base, where the remaining crew were moving boxes of equipment onto trolleys, ready to be loaded onto the shuttle.

'Can I help?' She asked Mia.

'Oh, hi Rose. Yes please, we need these boxes loading onto the trolleys.'

Rose smiled at the memory of moving stock onto the shop floor at Henricks. That was a million miles, and a lifetime away now.

'Okay, I can do that,' she told her as she parked the hover-pram out of the way and picked up one of the metal suitcases.

['Ed, we're clean,'] Adelaide's voice told them over the intercom. ['How are we doing?']

'Shuttle's active. Stage one,' he told her, and then spoke to the remaining crew. 'I haven't got time to convey the protein packs. If you want food you're going to have to carry it by hand. Start loading, right now.'

Everyone stopped what they were doing and started emptying storage bins built into the wall, and putting the trays onto the trolleys. Rose didn't need telling what to do. She went to one of the doors, pulled them open, and started taking out the trays of pre packed food.

A short while later, the Doctor and Adelaide entered the room. Rose put a tray on a trolley and hurried over to her husband to give him a kiss and a hug. 'Thank God you're back safe and sound. Is it time we left now?'

'Yeah, time to go.'

Rose looked around the room at the hustle and bustle of activity, as the crew prepared to run for their lives. She saw Adelaide approaching, carrying the Doctor's spacesuit which she handed to him.

'Now get to your ship. I'm saving my people, you save yourselves. I know what this moment is . . . It's the moment we escape. Now get out,' she said with a smile.

Rose watched Adelaide join her crew and start directing their efforts. 'Do they make it then? I mean, I know you said the base is destroyed, but they make it out yeah?'

He looked down at her, and she knew the answer without him saying a word. She could see the sorrow in his eyes, and she could feel the sadness in his soul.

'Oh,' she said sadly. 'Isn't there anythin' we can do?' But she already knew the answer to that as well.

He watched silently, as the crew hurried about to prepare the supplies for transportation.

'What the hell's that noise?' Adelaide asked. 'Mia, you lot, shut up.'

Ed checked the console. 'It's the module sensors. Exterior twelve. The cameras are down, but there's pressure on top of the module. Two signals right above us.'

'That means they're on the roof?' Steffi said.

'How did they get inside the Dome?' Yuri asked.

'They used the maintenance shafts,' Ed told them.

Mia frowned. 'The shaft's open and they haven't got spacesuits.'

'They breathe water,' Ed told her.

'But they'd freeze.'

'They've got that internal fission,' Yuri explained.

'But we're safe, they can't get through, can they?' Mia asked nervously. 'Can they?'

'This place is airtight,' Roman declared.

Steffi was starting to panic. 'Can it get through? Ed, can it get through?'

'I don't know! Water itself isn't motile, but it has some sort of persistence.'

'Everyone, listen to me,' Adelaide called out. 'That's ten feet of steel-combination up there. We need all the protein packs or we're going to starve. Now keep working. Roman, watch the ceiling. Ed, get to the shuttle. Fire it up.'

'I can carry more than this lot, Captain,' Ed told her.

'That's an order!' Adelaide said.

'Captain.'

The Doctor continued to stand there, holding his spacesuit, and remembering how history recorded the end of Bowie Base One. He watched Ed leave for the shuttle, and Adelaide gave him a determined look as she walked across the room.

Finally he held Rose's hand and turned around. 'Let's go home.'

At the entrance to the airlock, Rose helped him into his suit before closing the transparent cover on the hover-pram, and reaching her helmet from the shelf underneath. They didn't speak, because there was nothing to say. They knew from experience that there was nothing they could do to change the events that were about to unfold.

Rose stepped into the airlock with Andrea, and the Doctor closed the door behind them. He went to the controls, and started the airlock cycle.

['Access denied. Access denied.']

'What's wrong?' Rose asked. 'Why won't it let us out?'

['Tell me what happens'] Adelaide asked over their helmet intercoms.

He looked into Rose's worried hazel eyes as he spoke. 'I don't know.'

['Yes, you do. Now tell me.']

'You should be with the others,' he said quietly.

['Tell me! I could ramp up the pressure in that airlock and crush you.']

'And what has a three month baby ever done to you?' Rose asked.

'You won't,' he said sadly. 'You could have shot Andy Stone, but you didn't. I loved you for that.' He tried to think of a way of explaining it to her. 'Imagine, imagine you knew something . . . Imagine you found yourself somewhere. I don't know, Pompeii . . . Imagine you were in Pompeii.'

'Oh, good example,' Rose said, seeing where he was going with it.

['What the hell's that got to do with it?']

'And you tried to save them,' he continued. 'But in doing so, you make it happen.' Rose saw his eyes filling with tears, and reached out to hold his hand. 'Anything I do just makes it happen.'

['Captain, we need you right now.'] they heard Steffi say in the background.

['I'm still here,'] Adelaide told them.

'You're taking Action One. There are four more standard action procedures. And Action Five is?' he asked her.

['Detonation.']

Rose's eyes went wide with realisation. 'It's her . . . she does it!'

The Doctor nodded. 'The final option. The nuclear device at the heart of the Central Dome. Today, on the twenty first of November 2059, Captain Brooke activates that device, taking the base and all her crew members with her. No one ever knows why. But you were saving Earth. That's what inspires your granddaughter. She takes your people out into the galaxy because you die on Mars. You die today. She flies out there like she's trying to meet you.'

['I won't die. I will not.']

'But your death creates the future.'

['Help me. Why won't you help, Doctor? Rose, If he knows all of this, why can't he change it?']

'I can't,' he told her.

'He would if he could,' Rose sobbed.

['Why can't you find a way? You could tell me, I don't know . . .'] she was saying, but he talked over her.

'I'm sorry, but I can't. Sometimes I can, sometimes I do. Most times I can save someone, or anyone. But not you. You wondered all your life why that Dalek spared you. I think it knew. Your death is fixed in time for ever. And that's right.'

['You'll die here too,'] she warned him. ['You and your family.']

'Doctor? What about your sonic?' Rose asked him, hoping that he could override the lockout.

'No,' he said to Rose and Adelaide together. He could override the lockout, but he wasn't going to. If he was right about Adelaide, he wouldn't have to.

['What's going to save you?']

'Captain Adelaide Brooke.'

Adelaide paused as she thought about what he had said, before unlocking the controls. ['Damn you.']

As they walked away from the base, they could hear the struggles from inside through their intercoms. Water had started to pour through the ceiling. Steffi was trapped behind a cascade of water and became infected. Then Roman told his captain to leave him. One drop had landed on his cheek.

The Doctor could hear Rose weeping inside her suit, unable to wipe away the tears, and then they heard Ed's voice.

['Captain. The shuttle is down.']

['What the hell do you mean?'] Adelaide demanded.

['Compromised. It was Maggie.']

['Get out of there'] Adelaide told him.

['Too late. They want this ship to get to Earth. Got no choice . . . Hated it, Adelaide. This bloody job. Arghhh . . . You never gave me a chance. You never could forgive me . . . See you later.']

The shuttle exploded on the launch pad, throwing the Doctor and Rose to the ground. Rose squealed in alarm and scrambled to her feet, covering the hover-pram with her body to protect it from the falling debris.

'Doctor. You mentioned Pompeii,' Rose reminded him. 'Pompeii was destroyed when you stopped the Pyroviles.'

'I know!' he said tersely. He didn't need reminding of that.

'And this base will be destroyed to stop the water.'

'Yes. It has to. That water cannot get to Earth.'

'I understand that. But what about the people who aren't contaminated? Why do they have to be inside when it blows? Caecilius and his family weren't in Pompeii when it fell.'

'But,' he said, climbing to his feet. 'I . . . We . . . Oh Rose, I love you.'

'I know.'

'Get Andrea to the TARDIS and get it prepped to fly. I'm going back in to buy them some time.'

'Okay. Be careful . . . Oh who am I kiddin'? Just try not to get yourself killed.'

He gave her a big grin and ran back inside the airlock.

* * *

The TARDIS materialised on a snow covered Georgian street. The Doctor led Adelaide, Mia, and Yuri out. Rose followed them out with Andrea wrapped in a warm blanket.

'Oh look Sweetheart, it's snowin'. Your mummy and daddy love the snow,' she cooed.

'Isn't anyone going to thank me?' the Doctor said to his stunned passengers.

'That's my house!' Adelaide said in amazement.

The Doctor smiled. 'Don't you get it? This is the twenty first of November 2059. It's the same day on Earth. And it's snowing. I love snow.'

'Told ya,' Rose said to her daughter.

'What is that thing?' Mia asked, obviously in shock 'It's bigger . . . I mean, it's bigger on the inside . . . Who the hell are you?'

Mia ran away, and it was obvious Yuri wanted to run after her. He looked to his commanding officer, even though she no longer was.

Adelaide nodded at the fleeing Mia. 'Look after her.'

'Yes, ma'am.' Yuri ran after Mia.

'You saved us,' Adelaide said.

'Welll . . . I just sent a location signal with my sonic screwdriver. It was Rose who locked on to it and landed the TARDIS.'

'It was a team effort,' Rose told her. 'We're a team, me and 'im.'

The Doctor grinned at her and then turned to Adelaide. 'Just think though. Your daughter, and your daughter's daughter, you can see them again. Family reunion.'

'But I'm supposed to be dead.'

'Not any more.'

'But Susie, my granddaughter. The person she's supposed to become might never exist now.'

'Nah! Captain Adelaide can inspire her face to face' he told her. 'Different details, but the story's the same.'

'You can't know that. And if my family changes, the whole of history could change. The future of the human race. No-one should have that much power.'

'Tough!'.

'You should have left us there.'

'Adelaide, I've done this sort of thing before. In small ways, saved some little people, but never someone as important as you. Oh, I'm good.'

'Little people? What, like Mia and Yuri? Who decides they're so unimportant? You?'

'He don't mean it like that,' Rose explained. 'It's not that they're unimportant. Everyone . . . and trust me, when I say everyone, I mean everyone. Everyone is important to the Doctor, but not everyone has a big impact on events.'

'For a long time now, I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not. I'm the winner. That's who I am. The Time Lord Victorious.'

'And there's no one to stop you.'

'No.'

'Wanna bet?' Rose said with a cheeky smile.

'This is wrong, Doctor. I don't care who you are. The Time Lord Victorious is wrong.'

'That's for me to decide, and my wife to keep in check. Now, you'd better get home. Oh, it's all locked up. You've been away. Still, that's easy,' he said and pointed his sonic screwdriver at the front door. The lock clicked and the door opened. 'All yours.'

'Is there nothing you can't do?' Adelaide asked him.

'Not with me by his side,' Rose said, looking lovingly into his eyes.

He returned the look and smiled before looking at Adelaide. 'Not any more.'

Adelaide went inside, drawing her gun as she closed the door. There was a shot, and the energy blast lit up the window. Rose gasped, and the Doctor turned around to look.

'Why?' Rose pleaded. 'She was safe. Why would she do that?'

'Because I convinced her that her death was important,' the Doctor said sadly. 'It's all my fault. Anything I do just makes it happen.'

Rose reached up with her free, right hand and stroked his cheek. 'No. It wasn't your fault . . . it was her choice. You told her the details were different, but the story's the same.'

She reached around his neck with her arm and pulled him into a hug. Over her shoulder, he saw Sigma Ood looking at him. 'I've gone too far . . . Is this it? My death? Is it time?'

Rose thought he was talking to her. 'Wha? No! Of course not. Why would it be time to die, just because you saved people?'

The Doctor hugged his wife and child, and Sigma Ood vanished. He released them from the hug and they went inside the TARDIS. Rose put Andrea into the baby jump seat that was attached to a coral strut, whilst the Doctor stared at the console, wondering about the vision of Sigma Ood.

There was a soft, distant "dong" from deep inside the TARDIS, as the Cloister bell tolled.

Rose looked up suddenly. 'Doctor?'

'No!' he exclaimed, and started the Time Rotor.


	4. The Beginning of the End of Time

**Chapter 4  
**

 **The Beginning of the End . . . of Time  
**

The TARDIS materialised in the snowy landscape of the Ood sphere, and the Doctor stepped out in his brown pinstriped suit and long brown coat. He was wearing sunglasses, a straw Stetson and a lei. Rose came out behind him in a padded ski suit, also wearing sunglasses, a Stetson and a lei. She was carrying their six month old daughter Andrea, who was dressed in a baby ski suit.

Sigma Ood was waiting for them.

'Oh, hello Sigma,' Rose said. 'Look Sweetheart, its Sigma Ood. Say hello,' she said, lifting Andrea's arm and waving it for her.

'Hello Rose. And welcome Andrea,' Sigma said with a slight bow.

The Doctor strolled forward with his hands in his pockets. 'Ah! Now, sorry. There you are. So, where were we? I was summoned, wasn't I? An Ood in the snow, calling to me.'

'Eh?' Rose asked. 'Whatcha mean summoned? An Ood in the snow callin' ya?'

'Ah! Er, it was when we dropped Adelaide and her crew off. Didn't want to worry you. Probably nothing.' He looked back to Sigma. 'It is nothing isn't it? So anyway, we didn't exactly come straight here. Had a bit of fun, you know. Travelled about . . . did this and that. Got into trouble. You know us. It was brilliant. I saw the Phosphorous Carousel of the Great Magellan Gestadt, saved a planet from the Red Carnivorous Maw, named a galaxy Alison . . . Ahem. Anyway, what do you want?'

'You should not have delayed,' Sigma told him.

'The last time I was here you said my song would be ending soon, and I'm in no hurry for that.'

'You will come with me.'

'Hold on. Better lock the TARDIS,' he said and pointed a remote key at the blue, wooden box. The door locked and the light flashed as it beeped. Rose giggled at the new modification, she thought it was brilliant.

'See? Like a car. I locked it like a car. Like . . . It's funny. No? Little bit?' Sigma turned and walked away. The Doctor looked at Rose and blew out his cheeks. 'Blimey, try to make an Ood laugh,' he said under his breath.

Rose bumped shoulders with him. 'They never seemed to be the laughing sort to me . . . more the disapprovin', tuttin' parent sort.'

'So how old are you now, Ood Sigma?' the Doctor asked as they caught up with him, and then he saw their city, built into the rock and ice on multiple levels. 'Ah! Magnificent.'

Sigma didn't react. The Doctor hudged his shoulder. 'Oh, come on, that is splendid. You've achieved all this in how long?'

'One hundred years.'

Rose felt the Doctor's mood suddenly change. His face became very serious. 'Then we've got a problem. Because all of this is way too fast. Not just the city, I mean your ability to call me. Reaching all the way back to the twenty first century. Something's accelerating your species way beyond normal.'

'Not nothin' then,' Rose said.

'And the Mind of the Ood is troubled.'

'Why, what's happened?' the Doctor asked.

'Every night, Doctor, every night we have bad dreams.'

Sigma led them to the Ood Council, where a number of Ood in monk's robes were sitting in a circle around a small fire, in an ice cave lit with candles. The Ood in white robes was wafting incense towards him and inhaling as he chanted.

'Returning, returning, returning, it is slowly returning through the dark and the fire and the blood. Always returning, returning to this world. It is returning, and he is returning, and they are returning, but too late. Too late. Far too late. He has come.'

'Sit with the Elder of the Ood and share the dreaming,' Sigma offered.

Rose nudged him and nodded at the group sitting on the floor. 'Go on then, enjoy your nap.'

The Doctor sat in the circle. 'So, right . . . Hallo.'

'You will join. You will join. You will join. You will join. You will join. You will join. You will join,' they chanted.

The Doctor linked hands with the Ood and saw the laughing face of the Master. Rose saw him flinch and break the circle. She felt his denial and disbelief in her mind.

'He comes to us every night. I think all the peoples of the universe dream of him now.'

'Who does?' Rose asked in concern.

'That man is dead,' the Doctor told them.

['Who is?'] Rose asked in his head. He showed her the vision he had seen, and she gasped in horror.

'There is yet more,' the Elder Ood told him. 'Join us. Events are taking shape. So many years ago, and yet changing the now. There is a man . . . So scared.'

The Doctor saw Wilfred Mott sitting at a table. 'Wilfred. Is he all right?'

'You should not have delayed, for the lines of convergence are being drawn across the Earth. Even now, the king is in his Counting house,' the Elder Ood said cryptically.

The Doctor was given images of a dark skinned man and his daughter being photographed. 'I don't know who they are.'

The Elder continued. 'And there is another. The most lonely of all . . . lost and forgotten.'

The Doctor saw a woman in a dark prison cell. 'The Master's wife.'

'We see so much, but understand little,' Sigma told them. 'The woman in the cage, who is she?'

'She was . . . It wasn't her fault, she was . . . The Master, he's a Time Lord, like me. I can show you.' He showed the Ood images of the Master and his wife on the Valiant, from the year that never was. 'The Master took the name of Saxon. He married a human, a woman called Lucy. And he corrupted her. She stood at his side while he conquered the Earth. I reversed everything he'd done so it never even happened, but Lucy Saxon remembered. I held him in my arms. I burnt his body. The Master is dead.'

'And yet, you did not see,' the Elder added.

'What's that?' the Doctor asked.

He heard the Master's laughter echoing in his head as he saw a woman picking up the Master's signet ring.

'Part of him survived. I have to go!' he said, and tried to stand. The Ood gripped his hands tighter and pulled him back down.

'But something more is happening, Doctor' the Elder told him. 'The Master is part of a greater design, because a shadow is falling over creation. Something vast is stirring in the dark. The Ood have gained this power to see through time, because time is bleeding. Shapes of things once lost are moving through the veil, and these events from years ago threaten to destroy this future, and the present, and the past.'

The Doctor frowned and Rose was worried. 'Doctor, what do they mean?'

'This is what we have seen, Doctor. The darkness heralds only one thing . . .'

'The end of time itself,' the ring of Ood said together.

The Doctor broke the circle, grabbed Rose's hand, and ran out of the cave, back to the TARDIS. He unlocked the door with his remote key fob and rushed inside. Rose followed him in and shut the door, running up the ramp and fastening Andrea into her baby jump seat.

'Where are we goin' in such a hurry?' Rose asked, as sparks flew from the console.

'To find Lucy Saxon. She's either going to try and bring the Master back, or someone is going to use her to bring him back. Either way, we've got to get to her and stop it.'

When the TARDIS stopped swaying, bucking and sparking it's way through the Vortex, the Doctor stopped the Time Rotor, and ran down the ramp to exit the TARDIS. Rose stood in the door of the TARDIS as the Doctor walked through the light dusting of snow towards the burnt out remains of Broadfell Prison.

'We're too late,' he told her, turning back towards the TARDIS. 'He's back . . . I can sense him.'

'But how?' Rose asked. She'd seen him die and burn on a funeral pyre.

'Dunno. He must have set up an escape plan. Probably brainwashed a group of people to reconstitute his cellular matrix.'

They went back inside the TARDIS, and the Doctor started scanning for an Artron energy signature. After a few seconds, he found what he was looking for.

'Gotcha!' he called out, and started the Time Rotor.

'Where is he?'

'Waste ground down in the Docklands.' He stopped the Time Rotor, and held Rose's shoulders. 'I need to see him alone, so I want you to stay in the TARDIS with Andrea.'

'But . . .' Rose started to protest.

'I know . . . but I need you to watch the monitor. He may have some brainwashed henchmen out there. If you see anything suspicious, let me know.'

'How?'

He gave her that dribbled down her blouse look. ['Like this.']

['Oh Yeah . . . Sorry.']

He grinned at her and pulled her into a hug and a passionate kiss, before heading down the ramp and out of the doors.

A little later, the Doctor stood on the edge of an excavation on the waste ground, and looked over the warehouses towards the docks and the river. He sniffed deeply, searching the air for the Master's scent, and he found it. He was close.

Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . .Boom.

Someone was banging on an oil drum. Four times. Could you call banging, knocking? The Doctor wondered. He hoped not.

Boom . . . Boom . . . Boom . . .Boom.

He looked around, worked out where the sound was coming from, and set off at a run.

Boom, boom, boom, boom.

He ran through piles of girders on the dockside until he saw the Master on a mound of rubble against the skyline. The Master roared at him and leaped high into the air . . . impossibly high. The Doctor realised that he must be burning up his Artron energy at an enormous rate.

He gave chase through the wasteland until he saw the Master waiting for him on a pile of girders, a big malevolent grin on his face. His skeleton flashed briefly under his skin. The Doctor was right, the Master was burning up out of control.

'Please, let me help,' the Doctor pleaded. 'You're burning up your own life force.'

The Master gave him a look which said "as if", and he jumped off the girders and ran away. The Doctor ran around the pile of girders in pursuit.

['Oh, be careful Love. It looks like he's got backup behind those girders. It might be an ambush,'] Rose told him as she watched the events on the scanner.

['Thanks Love. How many are there, and how big do they look?'] he asked as he ran around the girders

['About a dozen of them . . . but they look a bit old to be henchmen. He must be losing his touch.']

As the Doctor ran around the girders, he was met enthusiastically by Wilfred Mott, and a group of pensioners. 'Oh, my gosh, Doctor. You're a sight for sore eyes.'

'Out of my way!' the Doctor shouted as he tried to pursue the Master. He climbed a stack of girders, and looked out over the docklands. The Master was nowhere to be seen.

'Did we do it? Is that him?' an elderly, dark skinned man asked.

'Tall and thin, big brown coat,' a man dressed in a suit said.

'The Silver Cloak. It worked!' a silver haired woman in a red coat exclaimed as the Doctor climbed down off the girders. 'Because Wilf phoned Netty, who phoned June, and her sister lives opposite Broadfell, and she saw the police box, and her neighbour saw this man heading east.'

'Wilfred?' the Doctor said.

'Yeah?'

He leaned in close and whispered. 'Have you told them who I am? You promised me.'

'No, I just said you were a doctor, that's all. And might I say, sir, it is an honour to see you again.' Wilf saluted him.

'Oh, but you never said he was a looker. He's gorgeous,' the silver haired woman said. 'Take a photo.' She handed a camera to the man in the suit.

'Not bad, eh? Me next,' the suit man said with a look that would make Jack Harkness blush.

'I'm Minnie. Minnie the Menace. It's a long time since I had a photo with a handsome man,' the silver haired woman said as she wrapped her arm around his waist.

'Just get off him. Leave him alone, will you?' Wilf told her as the rest of the group huddled around the Doctor.

'Hush, you old misery. Come on, Doctor. Give us a smile.' The Doctor grimaced. 'That's it.'

The man in the suit took a picture. 'Hold on. Did it flash?'

'No, there's a blue light. Try again,' Minnie told him.

'I'm all fingers and thumbs.'

The Doctor tried to extricate himself from the huddle. 'I'm really kind of busy, you know.'

'Oh, it won't take a tick. Keep smiling,' Minnie said.

'Is that your ha-HAND, Minnie?' the Doctor asked, jumping as she squeezed his bum.

'Good boy,' Minnie said with a mischievous smile.

'Did you just goose my husband's bum?' a voice said behind them. They turned around to see Rose walking towards them with a grin on her face. Andrea was suspended in a harness in front of her.

'Oh, I hope you don't mind dear. He's got a lovely bum.'

Rose laughed. 'I know. Good on ya girl, it was worth it just to see the look on his face.'

'And you've got a little baby,' Minnie noticed. 'Isn't she gorgeous.' The pensioners started cooing over Andrea, who seemed to love the attention.

'Hello again, Rose,' Wilf said, kissing her on the cheek. 'Donna said you'd had a little girl.'

The Doctor interrupted the cosy little get together. 'Did you see where he went?'

'No, sorry. The scanner was focussed on you in case you were headin' into an ambush.'

* * *

A minibus dropped the Doctor, Rose and Wilf off outside a cafe.

'Come on, then. Here we are, hurry up,' Wilf said. He waved to the pensioners on the minibus. 'Bye. You behave, bye.'

He led them into the cafe. 'Over here, come on.'

They sat down at a table and ordered three cups of tea. 'Oh, we had some good times, didn't we though?' Wilf said. 'I mean, all those ATMOS things, and planets in the sky, and me with that paint gun.' He paused, as though he was reluctant to continue. 'I keep seeing things, Doctor . . . This face at night.'

'Who are you?' the Doctor asked him with an intense look.

'I'm Wilfred Mott.'

'No. People have waited hundreds of years to find me and then you manage it in a few hours.'

'Well, I'm just lucky I suppose.'

'No, we keep on meeting, Wilf. Over and over again like something's still connecting us,' the Doctor said.

'What I can't understand, is why you didn't just ask Donna for my number if you wanted to talk to him,' Rose said, as she played with Andrea.

'Well, I didn't want to trouble her, bein' so busy like, what with the weddin' and all.'

Rose's face lit up. 'Weddin'? She's gettin' married to that bloke . . . what was his name? Shaun wasn't it?'

'Yeah, that's him. He's sweet enough . . . He's a bit of a dreamer,' Wilf said to her kindly, and then looked at the Doctor. 'So, what's so important about me?'

'Exactly. Why you?' he said.

Rose could sense that something was troubling him. 'Are you all right? You seem a bit distracted.'

He hesitated and looked out of the window before speaking again. 'I was just thinking about the prophecy. The Master banged that oil drum four times.'

Rose looked surprised. 'Wha? Don't tell me you actually think there's somethin' to it.' Sigma Ood had told him that his song would be ending soon, when they had been on the Ood planet. And then a woman called Carmen, who had been on the bus that had travelled to San Helios had said it. But she had elaborated. "It is returning. It is returning through the dark. And then, Doctor? Oh, but then he will knock four times".

'What prophecy?' Wilf asked.

'I'm going to die,' the Doctor told him.

'Well, so am I, one day,' Wilf replied.

'Don't you dare,' the Doctor told him with a smile.

'All right, I'll try not to,' Wilf chuckled.

'But I was told. He will knock four times. That was the prophecy. Knock four times, and then . . .' The Master had returned through the darkness of death. And he had knocked four times on that oil drum.

'Yeah, but I thought, when I saw you before, you said your people could change, like, your whole body,' Wilf recalled.

'I can still die. If I'm killed before regeneration, then I'm dead. Even then, even if I change, it feels like dying.'

'Oh my Love,' Rose said with tears in her eyes, remembering that Christmas when he'd changed from the man in the leather jacket to who he was now.

He squeezed her hand as he continued to explain to Wilf. 'Everything I am dies. Some new man goes sauntering away, and I'm dead.'

Rose was upset, because he'd never explained that to her before. 'You said you were dyin', and to save your own life you changed your body . . . But you told me you were still you, you never told me that you really died.'

He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her towards him, kissing the top of her head. 'You were upset and traumatised when it happened. I didn't want to make it worse for you. And don't you remember, I still have all my memories, and aren't memories the thing that makes the person who they are?'

Rose looked into his concerned eyes. 'Yeah, I suppose. But you should have told me.'

'Yeah, sorry.' He released her from the hug and slapped his hands on the table. 'Right then. Time to track him down. I've got a date with destiny.'

'Do you have to?' Rose asked. 'Can't you leave it to UNIT or somethin'?' But she already knew the answer.

* * *

It was dark when the Doctor finally tracked the Master down to an abandoned warehouse. Electrical energy sparked in the Master's hands as the Doctor walked towards him. The Master's skull showed through his skin as he fired a beam of energy past the Doctor and created an explosion behind him.

The Doctor didn't even flinch as he continued to approach, fires burned behind him. Another warning shot passed on his other side, and again he ignored it. He saw the Master rubbing his hands together, creating crackling static charges.

The third beam hit the Doctor squarely in the chest, stopping him moving forward. Finally the energy stopped and the Doctor fell to his knees. The Master caught and held him, looking at the only other Time Lord in the universe. He then gave him a look of contempt and let him fall to the ground.

He crouched down and spoke to the Doctor, who was lying on the floor, struggling to breath. 'I had estates. Do you remember my father's land back home? Pastures of red grass, stretching far across the slopes of Mount Perdition. We used to run across those fields all day, calling up at the sky. Look at us now.'

The Doctor did remember. He saw the red lawns which led to the orchard of Magenta Fruits, where Trunkikes nested in the branches, and Silverband Flutterwings would pollinate the blooms. In the summer they would go down to the Cadonflood River, where they'd watch the jousting Neversuch beetles on the bank, the clacking of their antlers filling the warm air, and they'd fish for Yaddlefish in the crystal clear water.

All that was many lifetimes ago. A lifetime of innocence and freedom. The Doctor slowly recovered. 'All that eloquence. But how many people have you killed?'

'I am so hungry.'

'Your resurrection went wrong. That energy. Your body's ripped open. Now you're killing yourself.'

'That human Christmas out there. They eat so much. All that roasting meat, cakes and red wine. Hot, fat, blood, food. Pots, plates of meat, and flesh, and grease, and juice, and baking, burnt, sticky hot skin. Hot. It's so hot.'

'Stop it,' the Doctor told him.

'Sliced. Sliced. Sliced.'

'Stop it.'

'It's mine. It's mine. It's mine to eat and eat and eat.'

'Stop it!' the Doctor demanded. The Master covered his head with his arms. 'What if I ask you for help? There's more at work tonight than you and me.'

He uncovered his head and laughed. 'Oh yeah?'

'I've been told something is returning.'

'And here I am,' the Master said with wild eyes.

'No, something more.'

He held his head again. 'But it hurts.'

'I was told the end of time.'

'It hurts. Doctor, the noise. The noise in my head, Doctor. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four,' he said quickly, banging his head with his fist. 'Stronger than ever before. Can't you hear it?'

'I'm sorry.'

'Listen . . . listen, listen, listen. Every minute, every second, every beat of my hearts, there it is, calling to me. Please listen.'

'I can't hear it.'

The Master held the Doctor's head, and rested his forehead against his. 'Listen.'

Dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum.

The Doctor heard the beat and pulled away with a gasp.

'What?'

The Doctor looked at him in amazement. 'But . . .'

'What!?'

'I heard it. But there's no noise. There never has been. It's just your insanity . . . What is it? What's inside your head?'

The Master laughed with delight. 'It's real. It's real . . . IT'S REAL!' At last, he knew he wasn't insane. The noise was real. He fired two beams of energy downwards from his hands, propelling him into the air and out of the warehouse.

The Doctor ran after him out of the warehouse, and saw him standing on a mound of rubble.

'All these years, you thought I was mad,' the Master accused him. 'King of the wasteland. But something is calling me, Doctor. What is it . . ? What is it? WHAT IS IT?'

A bright light shone down on the Master, then a second one illuminated the Doctor. A pair of soldiers abseiled down on ropes, grabbed the Master and injected him with something to knock him out.

'Don't!' the Doctor called out as he ran towards them. Automatic gunfire peppered the ground in front of him, and he ran off to the side to try and circle around.

'Let him go!' he shouted as the Master was hoisted into the air. Something sharp hit him in the back, and his head started to spin.

['Doctor? Doctor, what's wrong?'] He heard Rose calling in his head as everything went dark.

* * *

'Ooh look. Silly Daddy is wakin' up,' the Doctor heard Rose say in an echoey voice. 'Just in time for a cup of tea . . . although, he don't deserve it,' she said, a little less echoey that time.

He opened one eye, and saw he was in the Medi-bay of the TARDIS. Rose had a lopsided smile on her face, and Andrea was looking at him with her usual expression of bemused fascination.

'Hello Sweetheart,' he said kissing his daughter's cheek. 'Hello Love,' he said, kissing his wife on the lips and accepting a mug of tea.

Rose picked up a tranquiliser dart off the tray and held it up. 'So, who shot ya then?'

'The same people who took the Master. I've lost him, and there's something big going down.'

'So how do we find 'im then . . . and I mean WE. Y' ain't gonna go off on yer own again to get shot with a dart.'

He opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it, and took a sip of his tea instead. He gave her a grin, before speaking. 'Wilfred Mott!'

'Eh?'

He put his mug down and sat Andrea on his lap. 'Donna's granddad, somehow he's connected to all this. I just have to work out how. So, we'll finish our cuppas and go and find him.'

The TARDIS landed outside the Nobles' home, and Donna was already out of the front door. Having been in the TARDIS, she was more attuned to the sound of its engines.

'Merry Christmas,' she said to the Doctor, who hurried past her.

'Are you sure?' he said distractedly as he headed for her grandfather who was coming out of the house.

'Christmas? Wha', today? Really?' said Rose as she stepped out with Andrea.

'Don't tell me ya didn't know,' Donna said with a frown and then smiled at Andrea, holding her hands out to hold her. 'Ooh, ain't she grown?'

Shaun and Sylvia walked past the Doctor, wishing him a merry Christmas, and went to see Andrea.

'I lost him,' the Doctor told the old soldier. 'I was unconscious. He's still on Earth, I can smell him, but he's too far away.'

Wilf was still disturbed by the woman he had seen on the television who had interrupted the Queen's speech. 'Oh, that's a shame. But I don't know why you are tellin' me.'

'You're the only one, Wilf. The only connection I can think of. You're involved, if I could work out how,' the Doctor told him. A hint of urgency in his voice. 'Tell me, have you seen anything? I don't know. Anything strange, anything odd?'

'Well, there was a . . .' he was going to tell him about the woman on the television, but remembered that the woman had told him not to tell the Doctor. "Tell the Doctor nothing of this. His life could still be saved, so long as you tell him nothing."

'What? What is it? Tell me,' the Doctor demanded.

'Well, it was . . .' He wanted to help the Doctor, but this information would somehow put him in danger. 'No, it's nothing.'

'Think-a think-a think. Maybe something out of the blue. Something connected to your life . . . Something.

Wilf remembered when Donna had given him his Christmas present earlier. 'Well, Donna was a bit strange. She had a funny little moment, this morning, all because of that book.'

'What book?'

As Wilf went inside to get the book, Rose and the others wandered over.

'So, did ya know it was Christmas day?' Rose asked him accusingly.

'Eh?' he said distractedly and then brought his attention back to his wife and daughter. 'Oh, yeah . . . sort of. I've been a bit busy trying to find a psychopathic Time Lord. And anyway, we can land on every Christmas day there's ever been if we want to.'

'Yeah, I know. But it would have been nice for Andrea if we'd have bought her presents and decorated the TARDIS.'

'Psychopathic Time Lord?' Donna asked worriedly.

The Doctor flashed her a smile. 'Nothing to worry about . . . Wellll, not much anyway . . . Welll, I'm working on it.'

'His name's Joshua Naismith,' Wilf interrupted, bringing out the book to show the Doctor.

'That's the man,' the Doctor told him. 'I was shown him by the Ood.'

'By the what?' Wilf asked.

'By the Ood,' Rose repeated.

'What's the Ood?'

'They're just the Ood,' the Doctor told him. 'But it's all part of the convergence. Maybe? It may be touching Donna's subconscious from when she was on the Ood planet.' He turned to Donna. 'Why this book?'

'I dunno. It just seemed to catch my eye when I went into WH Smiths. I don't even know what it's about, but I just thought it was something that Gramps would need . . . I mean want.'

'No, you said need. And I think you're right, because he needed it so that he could show it to me. Come on Rose, we've got to go.'

'Yeah, me too,' Wilf said.

'Dad? Don't be silly. It's Christmas,' Sylvia said.

'I know, but the Doctor says I'm part of this somehow,' he said, remembering the woman in the church and on the television. 'An' if he needs me, then I'll be there for 'im.'

'Well, if he's goin', I'm goin' too,' Donna said.

'No, y'don't need to do that Sweetheart,' Wilf told her.

'Yes I do Gramps,' Donna said, grabbing Shaun's hand. 'C'mon, I've been waitin' to show ya the inside of this mad box for ages.'

They went past the Doctor and Rose, who had bemused expressions on their faces. 'Ever felt like you've been left out of the decision making process?' the Doctor asked Rose with a lopsided smile.

'Frequently,' she replied with a laugh.

'Stay right where you are,' Sylvia said to Wilf as he went to follow Donna and Shaun into the TARDIS. 'And get those two out here right now.'

'I'll be back soon,' Wilf said hurrying into the TARDIS.

'Just you listen to me. I forbid it. Get out of there!' Sylvia demanded as the door shut and the TARDIS started to dematerialise. 'Doctor, bring my family back right now! Come back here! Come back here, I said! Come back!'

Shaun was looking around the vaulted room with his mouth open. 'So it's true! Everythin' you said about this place . . . it's all true.'

The Doctor handed Wilf the book as he circled the console. 'Naismith. If I can track him down . . .' He looked up and saw the look on the old soldier's face. 'Ah. Right. Yes . . . Bigger on the inside. Do you like it?'

'I thought it'd be cleaner,' is all Wilf could think of saying. He thought space ships would be like the Enterprise on Star Trek. All new and shiny.

'I do my best to keep it tidy,' Rose said. 'The kitchen is spotless, but it's SO big for one housewife to keep clean.'

'Oh, I didn't mean any offence,' Wilf said. 'But listen, Doctor, if this is a time machine, that man you're chasing, why can't you just pop back to yesterday and catch him?'

'I can't go back inside my own timeline. I have to stay relative to the Master within the causal nexus. Understand?'

Wilf nodded and then shook his head. 'Not a word.'

Rose laughed. 'Just smile and nod,' she advised him. 'That's what we do,' she said, nodding towards Donna, who was cuddling Andrea.

'Welcome aboard,' the Doctor said.

'Thank you.'

The Doctor landed the TARDIS and shut down the console. 'Right, everyone wait here and I'll go and find the Master.' As he moved towards the ramp leading to the doors, Rose took Andrea off Donna and followed him.

'Where do you think you're going?' he said sternly.

'I'm goin' to follow you so that I can pick you up when you get shot by another dart.'

'But you can't do that! It might be dangerous out there, and we've got Andrea to think of,' he said, trying to make her realise that their life had changed now that they had a child to look after.

'We could baby-sit,' Donna offered hesitantly to try and diffuse the situation.

'Oh would you Donna? That's really kind of you to offer,' Rose said as she handed her daughter back to her.

'What?' the Doctor said, realising that no one was taking any notice of him.

'She's got some bottles in the fridge, and there's a little cot in the living room for her to have a nap,' Rose finished, kissing Andrea on her forehead. 'Be a good girl for Auntie Donna now.'

Wilf chuckled. 'I think you've been out flanked, lad.'

The Doctor gave him a stern frown. 'Story of my life. I often wonder if I said "come on let's run headlong into danger and almost certain death", if people would then stay put.'

Rose came and kissed him on the cheek. 'Not a chance,' she said with a cheeky grin, and headed down the ramp to the doors. 'You comin' or what?'


	5. The End of Time Averted

**Authors note:** This is the last chapter in part one, and in the spirit of the old series, it's a cliff hanger. Part two will have two versions which I am working on now, one continuing with the Tenth Doctor, and one with the Eleventh. Let me know if you have a preference as to which one I post first. Thank you for reading.

 **Chapter 5  
**

 **The End of Time Averted**

'We've moved. We've really moved!' Wilf said as he stepped out of the TARDIS into the stables behind the Doctor and Rose.

'You should stay here,' the Doctor told him.

'Not bloody likely. You said I'm part of this, so I'm comin'.'

The Doctor rolled his eyes. 'Right! Lets run headlong into danger then . . . And don't swear.' He took a few steps and then reached into his pocket. 'Hold on.' He pointed the key at the TARDIS, which disappeared.

'What did you do?' asked Rose.

'Just a second out of sync. Don't want the Master finding the TARDIS. That's the last thing we need.'

Rose realised that he had borrowed the idea from the Daleks, who had hidden the Crucible in the Medusa Cascade. 'And Andrea is safely hidden away.' She kissed him on the cheek again. 'Thank you.'

'Yeah, just a big old softie, that's me.' He led them out of the stables and along the back of Naismith's mansion.

They found their way down to a cellar that was filled with high tech equipment, where they heard a woman talking. 'And the multiple overshots have triplicated.'

'Nice Gate,' the Doctor said as he poked his head around the alien portal in the cellar.

'Hello,' Rose said cheerfully, giving a little wave with her fingers.

'Sorry,' Wilf said, apologising for trespassing.

'Don't try calling security, or I'll tell them you're wearing a Shimmer' the Doctor told the young woman in the white coat. 'Because I reckon anyone wearing a Shhhimmer doesn't want the Shhhimmer to be noticed, or they wouldn't need a Shhhimmer in the first place,' he said, emphasising the "shh" sound.

'I'm sorry? What's a . . . Shhhimmer?' the woman asked, imitating his pronunciation.

The Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at her and pressed the button. 'Shhimmer,' he said with a cheeky smile.

The young woman's head turned into a green conker, and her shoulders slumped in defeat.

'Oh, my Lord. She's a cactus!' Wilf declared.

['Miss Addams?'] A man called over the intercom. ['Miss Addams?']

'He's got it working, but what is it? What's working?' the Doctor asked the room as he looked at the information on the high tech equipment's display screen.

A young man in a white coat entered the cellar. 'What are you doing here?'

Without turning around, the Doctor pointed the screwdriver at the man. 'Shhhimmer!' he said, turning him into a green conker also.

'Now, tell me quickly, what's going on? The Master, Harold Saxon, Skeletor, whatever you're calling him, what's he doing up there? Because I can tell you one thing, whatever it is, it won't be good.'

'But I checked the readings. He's done good work. It's operational,' the man said.

'Who are you, though?' the Doctor asked the green aliens. 'We met someone like you. He was brilliant, but he was little and red.'

'Oh yeah. Bannakaffalatta,' Rose remembered. 'He was lovely . . . an' so brave.'

'No, that's a Zocci,' the female Vinvocci said in an offended tone.

'We're not Zocci, we're Vinvocci. Completely different,' the man claimed indignantly.

'And the Gate is Vinvocci,' the alien female explained. 'We're a salvage team. We picked up the signal when the humans reactivated it. And as soon as it's working, we can transport it to the ship.'

'But what does it do?' Rose asked.

The male alien explained. 'Well, it mends. It's a simple as that. It's a medical device to repair the body. It makes people better.'

The Doctor shook his head. 'No, there's got to be more. Every single warning says the Master's going to do something colossal.'

Wilf was trying to come to terms with the idea of aliens and their technology. 'So that thing's like a sickbed, yes?'

'More or less,' the female Vinvocci said.

'Well, pardon me for asking . . . but why is it so big?' asked Wilf.

'Oh, good question. Look out Rose, you've got competition,' the Doctor said teasingly. 'Why's it so big?'

'It doesn't just mend one person at a time,' the female Vinvocci told him in an "isn't it obvious" tone of voice.

'That would be ridiculous,' the male Vinvocci laughed.

'It mends whole planets!' the female Vinvocci explained.

'Yer what?' Rose asked as though she had misheard her.

The Doctor hadn't misheard her though, and was hoping he had. He removed his brainy specs, and put them in his pocket. 'It does what?'

The Vinvocci woman explained. 'It transmits the medical template across the entire population.'

The Doctor now realised what the Master was up to and ran out of the cellar. Rose ran after him, and Wilf hurried along as fast as he could.

The Doctor ran into a room in the mansion which had a high tech portal, with a shimmering centre. 'Turn the Gate off right now!'

'At arms!' a man dressed as a butler commanded. A group of soldiers in black uniforms, black helmets, and black visors, pointed their weapons at him.

'No, no, no, no, no. Whatever you do, just don't let him near that device,' the Doctor told them.

'Oh, like that was ever going to happen,' the Master said sarcastically from inside his strait jacket. He threw his arms wide, casting off the strait jacket and leaped over their heads on pillars of energy emanating from his hands, landing in the shimmering Gate portal.

'Homeless, was I? Destitute and dying? Well, look at me now,' the Master said menacingly.

'Deactivate it. All of you; turn the whole thing off!' the Doctor warned them.

The Master's laughing face echoed through all the human's heads.

Joshua Naismith shook his head, as though trying to dislodge the unwanted image. 'He's inside my head.'

The Doctor could see Naismith's daughter, Abigail shake her head as well. He hurried towards the Master in the Gate. 'Get out of there!'

The Master launched a blast of energy towards the Doctor, knocking him down.

'Doctor!' Rose called to him as she ran into the room and knelt beside him. She was also shaking her head.

'Rose, what is it? What's the matter?'

Before she could answer, Wilf stumbled into the room. 'Doctor! Doctor, there's . . . there's this face.'

'What is it? What can you see?' he asked them.

'Well, it's him. I can see him,' Wilf told him, pointing at the Master.

'It's the Master. He's laughing at us inside our heads,' Rose explained.

The Doctor looked at the news broadcast on the television. ['There's something wrong. It seems to be affecting the President.']

The President of the United States had his face in his hands. The Doctor went to the computer and tried to shut down the Gate. 'I can't turn it off.'

The Master gave him a withering look. 'That's because I locked it . . . idiot.'

The Doctor grabbed Wilf's elbow and steered him towards a glass cubicle. 'Wilfred! Get inside. Get him out . . . Rose, with me.'

He squeezed into one of a pair of glass sided cubicles with Rose, and pressed a red button on the small control desk to open the door on the other cubicle for Wilf.

'Ooh, cosy,' Rose said saucily, and then had another flash of the Master laughing inside her mind.

Wilfred pulled the white coated technician out of the cubicle and swapped places with him.

The Doctor adjusted slider controls on the desk. 'Just need to filter the levels.'

Rose lowered her hand from her face and looked at her husband as though she were seeing him for the first time. 'Oh . . . hi,' she said with a smile.

'Oh, I can see again! He's gone,' Wilf called from the other cubicle.

'Radiation shielding,' the Doctor explained. 'Now press the button. Let me out.'

'You what?' Wilf asked in confusion.

'I can't get out until you press the button. That button there,' he told him, pointing through the glass at the big red button on Wilf's desk.

Wilf pressed the button, locking himself in, and releasing the Doctor and Rose.

'Stay inside until I shut it down,' he told Rose as he ran out to face the Master.

'Fifty seconds and counting,' the Master gloated.

'To what?' he asked.

'Oh, you're going to love this.'

'What is it, hypnotism? Mind control. You're grafting your thoughts inside them, is that it?' the Doctor enquired urgently.

'Oh, that's way too easy. No, no, no. They're not going to think like me, they're going to become me.' The Master spread his arms out in anticipation. 'And, zero!'

A blast of energy moved out from the Master and the Gate, spreading across the entire planet. Every human face became blurred except for Rose and Wilf. Donna, Shaun and Andrea were also unaffected, being shielded by the TARDIS, and being a second out of sync with the rest of the universe.

The Doctor looked around the room as everyone's head shook rapidly, blurring their features and revealing flashes of the Master's face. 'You can't have.'

'What is it?' Wilf asked.

'Doctor . . . what's he done?' Rose asked as everyone in the room turned into the Master.

'What is it? What have you done, you monster?' Wilf said.

The Master in the Gate responded. 'Oh, I'm sorry, are you talking to me?'

'Or to me?' the Master who used to be Naismith asked.

'Or to me?' asked the Master who was wearing Abigail's clothes.

'Or to me?' the Master in a butler suit asked.

'Or to us?' the black uniformed security guards asked as they lifted their visors.

'The human race was always your favourite, Doctor,' the Master said, stepping out of the Gate to stand in front of all the other Masters. 'But now, there is no human race. There is only the Master race.' He started to laugh maniacally, joined by every human on the planet.

* * *

In Joshua Naismith's study, the Doctor had been strapped to an upright trolley and gagged. Rose and Wilf were tied to chairs nearby.

The Master leaned in close to the Doctor and spoke into his ear. 'Now then, I've got a planet to run. Is everybody ready?'

All the Masters from around the world reported in, indicating that they were ready. 'Enough soldiers and weapons to turn this planet into a warship. Nothing to say, Doctor? What's that? Pardon? Sorry?' he joked.

'Leave him alone,' Rose warned.

'You let him go, you swine,' Wilf demanded.

'Oh, your wife and dad are still kicking up a fuss.'

'Yeah? Well, I'd be proud if I was,' Wilf said.

'Hush, now. Listen to your Master.'

'You're no master of me!' Rose said defiantly as Wilf's phone started to ring.

'But that's a mobile,' the Master said.

Wilf struggled against the ropes. 'Yeah, it's mine. Let me turn it off.'

'No, no, no, no, no. I don't think you understand. Everybody on this planet is me. And I'm not phoning you, so who the hell is that?'

'It's nobody. I tell you, it's nothing. It's probably one of them ring-back calls.'

The Master started to search Wilf's pockets.

'Leave him alone,' Rose told the Master. 'He's an old man. He can't harm you.

The Master pulled out the revolver. 'Ooh, and look at this. Good man!'

'You've got a gun?' Rose asked incredulously. Wilf just shrugged apologetically.

The Master tossed the gun on the floor and found the phone, looking at the caller name. 'Donna. Who's Donna?'

'She's no one. Just leave it,' said Wilf.

The Master pressed the "answer" button. ['Gramps? Are you all right? Is the Doctor there, 'cos we were watchin' the news, an' there's somethin' weird happenin'? Everyone looks the same.']

'Who is she? Why didn't she change?' the Master asked him.

['Gramps, I can't hear you.']

'She's somewhere safe where you can't get at her,' Rose told him.

['Are you there?'] They heard Donna ask. ['Oh, I hope it hasn't happened to 'im an' all']

The Master went to a screen. 'Find her. Trace the call.'

['Are you still there? Can you hear me?']

'Say goodbye to Donna, Granddad,' the Master said teasingly. 'We're coming to find you,' he said in a sing song voice.

'Donna, switch your phone off!' Rose shouted at the phone. 'He's tracin' the call.'

['She's here at the mansion,'] the Master who used to be Naismith said on the screen. ['In the stables.']

'Deploy the guards. Search the grounds. You know what we're looking for,' the Master told himself on the screen. They knew they were looking for a blue wooden box.

The Doctor was smiling under the gag, and he winked at the Master, who went over and removed his gag.

'That's better. Hello . . . But really, did you think I'd leave my motor where you could find it?' the Doctor said with a smile.

['We've searched the location of the phone signal. There's nothing there,'] the Master who used to be Naismith told him.

'Tell me, where's your TARDIS?' the Master said menacingly.

'You could be so wonderful.'

'Where is it?'

'You're a genius. You're stone cold brilliant, you are. I swear, you really are. But you could be so much more. You could be beautiful. With a mind like that, we could travel the stars. It would be my honour. Because you don't need to own the universe, just see it . . . To have the privilege of seeing the whole of time and space . . . That's ownership enough.'

His words seemed to be getting through to him. 'Would it stop, then . . ? The noise in my head?'

'I can help.'

'I don't know what I'd be without that noise.' His madness seemed to have receded for the moment.

'I wonder what I'd be, without you.'

'Yeah.'

'What does he mean? What noise?' Wilf asked, and Rose remembered the drumming noise Professor Yana and the Master complained about when she had met him before.

'It began on Gallifrey, as children. Not that you'd call it childhood. More a life of duty. Eight years old. I was taken for initiation, to stare into the Untempered Schism,' the Master sat as he began.

'What does that mean?' Wilf asked.

The Doctor answered. 'It's a gap in the fabric of reality. You can see into the Time Vortex itself . . . And it hurts.'

The Master continued. 'They took me there in the dark. I looked into time, old man, and I heard it calling to me. Drums. The never ending drums. Listen to it . . . Listen.'

'Then let's find it. You and me,' the Doctor offered.

'Except . . .' the Master paused as his madness returned. 'Oh. Oh, wait a minute. Oh, yes. Oh, that's good.'

'What? What is?' the Doctor asked him urgently.

'The noise exists within my head, and now within six billion heads. Everyone on Earth can hear it. Imagine. Oh. Oh, yes.' The Master's skeleton became briefly visible again.

'The Gate wasn't enough. You're still dying,' the Doctor told him.

'This body was born out of death. All it can do is die. But what did you say to me, back in the wasteland? You said the end of time.'

'I said something is returning. I was shown a prophecy. That's why I need your help.'

'What if I'm part of it? Don't you see? The drumbeat is calling from so far away. From the end of time itself. And now it's been amplified six billion times. Triangulate all those signals. I could find its source. Oh, Doctor. That's what your prophecy was.' He held his arms out. 'Me!'

He slapped the Doctor across the face.

'Oi! Leave 'im alone,' Rose said, struggling against the ropes that bound her.

'Where's the TARDIS?' the Master asked with an air of menace.

'No. Just stop. Just think,' the Doctor pleaded.

The Master pointed behind him. 'Kill one of them.'

A helmeted guard went over to Rose and Wilf.

'I need that technology, Doctor. Tell me where it is, or one of them dies.'

'Don't tell him,' Wilf said.

'You can't tell him,' Rose confirmed.

'I'LL KILL ONE OF THEM RIGHT NOW!' the Master shouted, and then remembered who Rose was. 'Or . . . I could look inside your wife's mind. Ooh that sounds like much more fun.' He walked over to Rose and grabbed her head as she tried to struggle out of his grip.

'Master! I'm warning you. You really don't want to do this,' the Doctor warned him.

Rose glared at the Master with defiance blazing in her eyes. 'Don't you dare! I won't let you rape my memories.'

'Ooh. She's a feisty one, Doctor,' he said light heartedly, and then looked menacingly into her eyes. 'Like you have a choice.'

Rose yelped and stiffened as she felt him dive into her mind and trigger her memories. They saw the basement in Henricks, where the Doctor first held her hand, and then all the adventures they had experienced since that moment.

'Oh, poor Mickey,' the Master pouted. 'The loving puppy, dumped by his mistress because she fell in love with a loser.'

'Get away from her,' the Doctor told him.

The Master ignored him and probed further until he got to their wedding. This was what he was looking for, the part where the Doctor tells his wife his name. With the Doctor's name, he could unlock all of his thoughts and memories.

He watched through Rose's eyes as the Doctor leaned forward to whisper in her ear. But as the Doctor opened his mouth, he saw long canine teeth, dripping with saliva. He pulled away, and saw the head of a large black wolf, it's eyes blazing with golden fire as it lunged forward to savage him.

Rose gasped as the Master fell back onto the floor, a golden glint fading from her hazel eyes. He was stunned and enraged by his failure. How could a puny human defy his telepathic powers?

He glared at the Doctor. 'Kill them!' The guard raised his weapon.

'Actually, the most impressive thing about you is that after all this time, you're still bone dead stupid,' the Doctor said.

'Take aim.'

['Love?'] Rose asked in his head, hoping he had a plan.

['You're gonna like this,'] he replied to her before speaking. 'You've got six billion pairs of eyes, but you still can't see the obvious, can you?'

'Like what?'

'That guard is one inch too tall.'

The guard knocked out the Master with his rifle butt, then removed his helmet to reveal a green spiky head. 'Oh my God, I hit him. I've never hit anyone in my life.'

The female Vinvocci ran in. 'Well, come on. We need to get out of here fast.' She freed Rose, while her partner released Wilf.

'God bless the cactuses!' Wilf said.

'That's cacti,' the Doctor corrected, still strapped to his trolley.

'That's racist!' the male Vinvocci informed them.

['This prophecy of yours, Doctor, where did it come from?'] the Master who used to be Naismith asked on the screen. ['Doctor?']

'Come on! We've got to get out,' the female Vinvocci told them.

Rose ran to her husband and started to try and undo the buckles. 'There's too many buckles and straps.'

'Just wheel him,' the female Vinvocci suggested.

The male Vinvocci tipped back the trolley and started to wheel the Doctor out of the room. 'No, no, no. Get me out. No, no, no, don't. Don't! No, no, no,' the Doctor protested.

'Which way?' the male Vinvocci asked.

'This way,' his partner said, leading the way.

'No, no, no, no, no. The other way. I've got my TARDIS,' the Doctor told her.

'Will you listen?' Rose demanded. 'We have a ship . . .'

'I know what I'm doing.'

'No, no, no, just, just listen to me!' the Doctor said as they wheeled him down a corridor. 'Not the stairs. Not the stairs!' His body rattled on the trolley as he was bumped down the stairs to the basement. 'Worst - rescue - ever! Just, just stop and listen to me!'

The Master ran in with armed guards. 'Gotcha!'

'You think so?' the female Vinvocci asked, pressing her wristwatch.

'No, no, no, no, don't!' the Doctor called out as the basement was replaced by a room with lighting panels on the walls, and control desks.

'Now get me out of this thing!' the Doctor continued to complain.

'Don't say thanks, will you,' the female Vinvocci said sullenly.

Rose started to undo the buckles, as the Doctor continued to complain. 'He's not going to let us go. Just hurry up and get me out!'

'All right. I'm goin' as quick as I can,' Rose told him.

'Sorry, but we're in serious trouble here.'

Wilf wandered over to an observation window and looked out at the planet Earth. 'Oh, my goodness me. We're in space!'

They finally got the Doctor free, and he hurried over to the teleport control where he zapped it with his sonic screwdriver. 'Where's your flight deck?' he asked the female Vinvocci.

'But we're safe. We're a hundred thousand miles above the Earth,' she told him.

'And he's got every single missile on the planet ready to fire.'

'Good point.' She led them out of the room at a run. The Doctor returned to the room, and gently led Wilf away from the window.

'But we're in space!' Wilf told him, pointing at the Earth below.

'Yep.' He led him out of the room and hurried him along the metal walkways to the flight deck. 'We've got to close it down!' he told the Vinvocci as he entered the flight deck.

'No chance, mate. We're going home,' the male alien told him.

'We're just a salvage team,' the female Vinvocci explained. 'Local politics has got nothing to do with us. Not unless there's a carnival. Sooner we get back to Vinvocci space the better.'

'We're not leaving.' The Doctor sonically sabotaged the flight controls. The whole space ship went dark.

'Hah! Just like a submarine,' Rose laughed.

'Silent running,' Wilf explained.

'Shush, shush, shush, shush, shush, shush,' the Doctor instructed.

'No sign of any missiles. No sign of anything. You've wrecked the place!' the female Vinvocci complained.

'The engines are burnt out. All we've got is auxiliary lights. Everything else is kaput. We can't move. We're stuck in orbit,' her male companion added.

'Thanks to you. YOU IDIOT!' the female shouted angrily.

'OI!' Rose said, grabbing her elbow and spinning her around. 'Maybe you'd prefer to have been shot by a planet full of psychopaths, eh? Or, I dunno, blown out of the skies by a planet full of nuclear weapons? Yer coulda listened to us and wheeled 'im to our ship like he said. But no . . . Little miss cactus head knew best, didn't she?'

The Doctor gently touched his wife's shoulder. 'Okay Rose, I think you've made your point.'

The female alien looked like she was going to cry, and hurried off the flight deck.

'I know you, though,' Wilf said. 'I bet you've got a plan, haven't you? Eh? Come on. You've always got a trick up your sleeve. Nice little bit of the old Doctor flim-flam . . .' He did a Tommy Cooper impression. 'Har, har, sort of thing? Eh?' He saw the resigned look on the Doctor's face. 'Oh, blimey.'

Wilf went off to explore the space ship, while he left the Doctor working on the wiring of the control console. Rose was sitting on the step by his side, resting her head on his shoulder.

'Oh look. A shooting star,' she said, pointing out of the window at a streak of light falling through the atmosphere.

* * *

'This is my ship, and you're not moving it,' the female Vinvocci told the Doctor sternly. 'Step away from the wheel.'

'There's an old Earth saying, Captain. A phrase of great power and wisdom, and consolation to the soul in times of need,' the Doctor replied as he stared out of the window.

'What's that, then?' the female Vinvocci asked in a disinterested tone of voice.

'Allons-y!' The Doctor and Rose said together as he thrust the levers forward, powering the space ship down towards the Earth. 'Come on! Come on!' he chanted, as the spaceship dived through the atmosphere.

'You are blinking, flipping mad,' the female Vinvocci said in annoyance.

Rose flashed her a smile. 'Now you're gettin' it.'

The Doctor glanced at Wilf and the male Vinvocci. 'You two. What did I say? Lasers.'

'What for?' the green alien asked.

'Because of the missiles. We've got to fight off an entire planet.'

The female Vinvocci was looking at some information on a monitor. 'We've got incoming.'

'Look at this one! Oh, my God!' the male Vinvocci said as he saw the Sub Harpoon, UGM-A4A's heading towards them.

'You two, open fire!' the Doctor called to them, as he skimmed the ocean to dodge the missiles.

'Oh, my word!' the male Vinvocci said as he aimed the lasers.

'OPEN FIRE!' the Doctor shouted.

'Come on, Wilf!' Rose encouraged.

Wilf was swaying about in the glass bubble as he fired his laser and shot down a missile. 'Whoo! Oh, I wish Donna could see me now.'

'And there's more!' the female Vinvocci announced from the scanner. 'Sixteen of them . . . Oh, and another sixteen.'

'Then get on the rear gun lasers!' he told her. 'Rose?'

'Don't worry, I'm on it,' she replied as she followed the green alien off the flight deck.

'You two; open fire! Now!' the Doctor instructed.

'Yes!' the male Vinvocci said as a missile exploded.

'No, you don't!' the Doctor told the missiles as he rocked the ship from side to side.

Rose eased herself into the seat of the rear glass bubble and grabbed the joysticks. 'Cool! Just like the Millennium Falcon,' she said with a grin. She was used to playing console games with Mickey, and soon got the hang of the controls.

All three of them got their eye in, and started destroying missiles.

'Come on!' Wilf cried with enthusiasm.

'Come on! Fire!' the Doctor called to them as a missile got too close.

Wilf hit the missile and it blew out the front window of the flight deck. 'Whoa! Wow!'

The male Vinvocci hit another. 'Yes!'

'Whoo hoo!' Rose yelled as she took out another one.

The Doctor called over to the female Vinvocci above the howling wind. 'Lock the navigation.'

'Onto what?'

'England . . . The Naismith mansion.'

Rose stumbled back onto the flight deck. 'Blimey, you've let this place go a bit,' she joked.

The Doctor grinned at her. 'Cowboy builders.' He looked over his shoulder. 'Destination?' He called to the female Vinvocci.

'Fifty klicks and closing. We've locked on to the house.' She noticed that the speed of the ship hadn't slowed. 'We are going to stop, though . . . Doctor? We are going to stop?'

Rose frowned at the woman and then at her husband. 'So, what's the plan then?'

'Oh, you know me and plans . . . I'll just wing it.'

Wilf returned from his laser turret. 'Doctor . . ? Doctor, you said you were going to die.'

'He said what?' the female Vinvocci asked in surprise.

'But is that all of us?' Wilf asked quietly. 'I won't stop you, sir . . . But is this it?'

Rose saw the look on his face, and felt his intention. 'No. It's not all of us.'

The Doctor skimmed the treetops, and pulled the spaceship's nose up at the last moment. 'Here, take the controls,' he told the female Vinvocci.

He took Rose's face in his hands and kissed her on the lips. He then crouched down and opened a hatch in the floor. He took the revolver out of his pocket, looked at Rose one last time, and jumped.

He crashed through the glass dome of the mansion, which fortunately slowed his fall, but he still landed heavily on the marble floor. He tried to aim the revolver at the Time Lords who had appeared where the Gate used to be, but couldn't hold it.

He couldn't stand, he could hardly breath. He'd taken a fall that would kill a human, and he was covered in cuts and bruises. The five Time Lords were standing on a dais, in a white area where the Gate used to stand.

The Lord President Rassilon stepped forward. 'My Lord Doctor. My Lord Master. We are gathered for the end.'

'Listen to me . . . You can't!' the Doctor said.

'It is a fitting paradox that our salvation comes at the hands of our most infamous child,' said Rassilon.

'Oh, he's not saving you,' the Doctor told the Master. 'Don't you realise what he's doing?'

'Hey, no, hey! That's mine. Hush. Look around you. I've transplanted myself into every single human being. But who wants a mongrel little species like them, because now I can transplant myself into every single Time Lord,' the Master gloated. 'Oh, yes, Mister President, sir, standing there all noble and resplendent and decrepit. Think how much better you're going to look as me.'

The Lord President held up his metal gauntlet and It glowed. Everyone who looked like the Master started to go through the head blurring again.

The Master looked around the room. 'No, no, don't. No, no, stop it! No, no, no, don't!'

Finally, everyone on Earth was restored to themselves. 'On your knees, mankind,' Rassilon commanded, and everyone in the room kneeled down in fear.

'No, that's fine, that's good, because you said salvation. I still saved you. Don't forget that,' the Master reminded him.

'The approach begins,' Rassilon said.

'Approach of what?' the Master asked.

'Something is returning,' the Doctor told him, pushing himself up onto his hands and knees. 'Don't you ever listen? That was the prophecy. Not someONE, someTHING.'

'What is it?'

'They're not just bringing back the species. It's Gallifrey. Right here, right now.'

A big burnt amber planet appeared in the sky. The tidal forces of the new planet made the Earth shake, and people ran from the room.

The Master pleaded with Rassilon. 'But, I did this. I get the credit . . . I'm on your side.'

Rose and Wilf pushed their way in. 'Come on, get out the way' Rose said. 'Get out of the way! Doctor?' She hurried over to him and knelt by his side, putting an arm around his shoulders.

A technician was hammering on the door of his locked glass cubicle. 'Help me, please. Somebody, please.'

Wilf went over to the empty cubicle. 'All right! I've got you, mate. I've got you.'

'Wilf, don't . . . DON'T!' the Doctor shouted.

Wilf pressed the red button and unlocked the other cubicle. 'I've got you. Come on. Go on.'

The freed technician ran out of the room.

'But this is fantastic, isn't it? The Time Lords restored,' the Master said.

'You weren't there in the final days of the War. You never saw what was born. But if the Time lock's broken, then everything's coming through. Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-have-been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres. The War turned into hell. And that's what you've opened; right above the Earth . . . Hell is descending.'

The Master smiled. 'My kind of world.'

'Just listen! Because even the Time Lords can't survive that,' the Doctor told him.

'We will initiate the Final Sanction. The end of time will come at my hand. The rupture will continue until it rips the Time Vortex apart,' Rassilon announced.

'That's suicide,' the Master said.

'We will ascend to become creatures of consciousness alone. Free of these bodies, free of time, and cause and effect, while creation itself ceases to be.'

'You see now? That's what they were planning in the final days of the War,' the Doctor explained. 'I had to stop them.'

'Then, take me with you, Lord President. Let me ascend into glory,' the Master pleaded with his arms held wide.

Rassilon looked at the Master with disgust. 'You are diseased, albeit a disease of our own making . . . No more.'

He raised his gauntlet to vaporise the Master, but the Doctor was on his feet, standing between them, aiming the revolver at the Lord President.

'Doctor?' Rose queried uncertainly. Surely he wasn't going to shoot anyone . . . Was he?

Rassilon had a smirk on his face. 'Choose your enemy well. We are many. The Master is but one.'

'But he's the President. Kill him, and Gallifrey could be yours,' the Master goaded.

The Doctor turned and aimed the gun at him.

'He's to blame,' the Master said, nodding at Rassilon. 'Not me. Oh, the link is inside my head. Kill me, the link gets broken, they go back. You never would, you coward . . . Go on then. Do it.'

The Doctor turned and aimed at the Lord President again.

'Exactly. It's not just me, it's him. He's the link. Kill him!' the Master continued to goad.

Rassilon was still smirking at the Doctor's dilemma. 'The final act of your life is murder. But which one of us?'

Behind the Lord President, the mysterious woman who had been appearing to Wilf, lowered her hands and looked past Rassilon's shoulder. The Doctor saw her and turned back to face the Master.

The Master flinched as the Doctor pointed the revolver at him.

'Doctor . . . No!' Rose called out.

'Get out of the way,' he told the Master, who frowned, and then smiled as he realised what the Doctor was going to do. He moved to the side, and the Doctor shot the White Point Star diamond in the heart of the Gate control. The link exploded and the Time Lords started to be sucked away.

'The link is broken. Back into the Time War, Rassilon. Back into hell,' the Doctor declared.

'You'll die with me, Doctor,' Rassilon told him.

'No!' Rose gasped.

'I know,' the Doctor replied, as Rassilon aimed his gauntlet at him.

The Master spoke from behind him. 'Get out of the way.'

The Doctor stepped back and saw the Master rubbing his hands together, generating energy. He launched an attack on the Lord President with energy from his right hand.

'You did this to me!' he told Rassilon, launching an attack with his left hand, 'All of my life!' He continued the attack with his right hand. 'You made me!' Left hand attack. 'One!' Right hand. 'Two!' Left hand. 'Three!' Right hand. 'Four!' Left hand, and Rassilon fell to his knees.

The Time Lords and the Master disappeared in a bright light and Gallifrey faded away from the sky. Rose ran to the Doctor and hugged him.

'I'm alive!' he rejoiced.

'I know!' Rose laughed, kissing him on the lips.

'I've . . . There was . . .' He was speechless with relief. 'I'm still alive.'

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

The smile fell from his face, and Rose gasped.

'No!' she whispered, not wanting fate to hear her.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

There it was again. They both turned their heads slowly to see where the knocking was coming from.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

There was Wilf in the glass cubicle knocking on the glass with his knuckles.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

 **To Be Continued . . .**


End file.
